
Class _£^____i/_ 

Book o 

Copyright N°. 



COF/RIGHT DEPOSIT. 



HOW TO MAKE A 
COUNTRY PLACE 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

ANN MARIA DILLAWAY SAWYER 

MY MOTHER 

WHO FOSTERED IN ME A LOVE 
OF THE COUNTRY 



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THE FARM AS WE FOUND IT, AND HOW 
WE CHANGED ITS FACE AND SKYLINE. 



How To Make a 
Country Place 



An Account of the Successes and the Mistakes 
of an Amateur in Thirty-live years of 
Far'ming, Building, and Development: 
Together with a Practical Plan for 
Securing a Home and An Independent 
Income, Starting with Small Capital 



By 



JOSEPH DILLAWAY SAWYER 



Illustrated 



Niu YORK 

ORANGE JUDD COMPANY 

LONDON 

Kegan Paul, Trench, TrCbner ,\ Co., Limited 

l l M4 



T> 



&'c* 



Copyright, i9i4, by 

JOSEPH D. SAWYER 

All Right j Reserved 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England 



JUL 10 1914 

Printed in U. S. A. 



/^ 



6-0 



©CI.A374733 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

The Farm — Remodeling the Farm House — Hygiene — Water 
Supply — Sewage — Farm Lawn — Animals — The Dairy — 
Poultry — Bees — Star Gazing 1 

CHAPTER II. 

Our Birds — Fruit — Insects — Farm Help — Boys' Cabin — Pets — 
Forestry — Game Preserve — Hedges — Roads — Gutters — Ice — 
Play Side of Farming — County Fair — Symptoms of Build- 
ing Mania 35 

CHAPTER III. 

Evolution of Farmarcadia into Hillcrest Manor, Beginning 
With the Arboretum — Tree Planting — Anywhere Plants 
— Wonder Tree — Horticultural Alphabet — Poet's Corner — 
Pruning — Blue Ribbon Six — Forest Thinning — Maple 
Sugar Harvest — Bugs and Butterflies— "Yarbs" — Wild 
Garden — Bogland — Try-out Nursery 77 

CHAPTER IV. 

Hilltop — Stony Crest — The Gables — Buena Vista — Hillcrest 
House — Storm King — Stonehenge — Sky Rock — Brier Cliff 
— Croftleigh House — Cliffmont — Breezemont — Ledges — 
Drachenfels — Island House — Crossways — Red Towers 105 

CHAPTER V. 
Bellerica — White Rock — Yachtsman's Shelter — Shore Rocks 157 

CHAPTER VI. 
Pinnacle, the House Ideal, yet Thoroughly Practical — Home 211 

CHAPTER VII. 

Bungalows- 

Restcliff — Portable House — Cliff Eyrie — Tiny Cote — Crags — 

Fairview — Tree Top — Heartsease — Sea Boulders 245 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VIII. 

How to Build, and Keep Within the Limit Decided Upon, a 
Livable House for from $2,500 to $12,000 — A Mansion up to 
$100,000 281 

CHAPTER IX. 
Dry Technique of Building, Written for the Amateur 293 

CHAPTER X. 

How to Become a Householder With Twenty Tenants in Your 

Employ, Starting With a Capital of $2,000 331 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Acme of Contentment 18 

Adding to the Domicile 60 

A Few Things that Happened 

to the Farm 46 

Aggravating Fence Rows 48 

Alice 271 

Alice from Aloft 271 

Alice under Headway 260 

All Aboard 195 

An Easterly at Work with a 

Will 163 

Angora Aurea 76, 114 

Arboretum 30, 46, 54, 56, 66, 70 

Arboretum Drive 139 

Arboretum, Snow-blanketed. .54, 117 
Arboretum, the Second Year... 54 

Arch under Gazebo 173 

Argosy 264, 271 

At Home ; The Cot 60 

At the Mooring 272 

At the Pier 166 

Ausable Jr 52, 67 

Back Lane 62 

Balcony 177 

Balustrade 195 

Bare Ground to Dense Foliage. 128 

Barnyard 56 

Barnyard that Faced the Dining 

Room 36 

Bathing Beach 198 

Beach and Rock 185 

Becalmed 202 

Becalmed, "Bejiggered" Ill 

Beginnings of Motor Cave 275 

Bellerica 157, 192, 267 

Bellerica (Summer) 267 

Bellerica (Winter) 267 

Belvedere 173, 182, 191, 207 

Big Bay Window ISO. 187 

Biggest Corn Field 16 

Big Opening in Wall of Sea 

Boulders 275 

Big Four 109 

Bit of the Beach 181 

Black Pearl 17 

Blizzard of 1888 43 

Boat Cave 184 

Boat on which Perilous Trip 

Was Made 286 

Boat that Drew Four Indies... 271 

Boat Ways *. 259 

Boating Layout 191 

Boston Hip 76 



Both Gentle 12" 

Boulclered Entrance 246 

Boy and the Flag 176 

Breakfast Alcove 187 

Breakfast Room Window 173 

Breeze Points 265 

Breezemont 42, 46, 117 

Breezemont, Double-decked 139 

Breezemont Floor Plans. .. .109, 138 
Breezemont from Outline to 

Finish 139 

Breezemont, How We Built It.. 139 
Breezemont, Our Best House... 139 
Bridge between Our Manhattan 

and Bronx 76, 136 

Briercliff, Four Seasons 131, 133 

Briercliff Growing from Cliff. 131, 46 

Brunette . . 253 

Buena Vista 38, 44, 46, 118 

Buena Yista Floor Plans 109 

Buena Yista, Interior 50 

Buena Vista, North Front 116 

Buena Yista Site 112 

Buena Vista, South and Last 

Fronts 116 

Buena Vista, South Front 116 

Builder Foreman 52 

Building of Crossways 149 

Building of the Big House .... 126 

Building the Arch 123 

Bungalow Chien 20 

Bungalow Ideal 278 

Bungalow Second 250 

Butlery Door 177 

Big Crop 48 

Caller Who Crossed the Thresh- 
old 176 

Callers 12 

Canopied Veranda 298 

Care-free 288 

Care-free Days 260 

Care-free Hours 186 

Careless Handling 272 

Carved by the Elements 186 

Casement Doors 168 

Cattle Barns 30 

Cattle Yard 30, 76 

Cedar Arbor 256 

Cement Reinforced Veranda.... 202 

Changes 165 

Changing the Farm.... 36, 38, 40, 44 
Cherry 1 .ane 52, 54 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Chickens Are Safe 18 

Children's Bathing Pool 

173, 191, 204 

Chums 20 

Cliff Eyrie ...258, 269, 276, 279, 286 

Cliffmont 138 

Cliffmont, Framing and Finish- 
ing 40, 46 

Close Quarters 255 

Closet Windowed Rooms 178 

Clothes Chute Closet 194 

Cloud in the West 48 

College Full Back 8 

Commencement of Hostilities... 6 

Concrete Steps 182 

Congratulating Self 286 

Connecticut Capri 201 

Conservatory 

165, 178, 182, 190, 195, 196 

Conservatory Fountain 191 

Construction in Varied Stages.. 167 

Continental Water Wheel 6 

Corner of Pier 204 

Corner Windows 177 

Cot 60 

Cot Bedroom 62 

Cot Layout 114 

Covering the Hay Field 46 

Crags 192, 261, 267, 276, 286 

Crags Entrance Posts 263 

Crags, Off for Cape Ann 261 

Crags Site, Bare 262 

Crags Site, before and after.... 165 
Crags Site, Where We Built 

Shore Rocks 168 

Crags Ten Years Later 261 

Crags Veranda 263 

Croftleigh House ....40, 46, 64, 134 

Cromlech House 40, 42, 114 

Crossways 152 

Cruelty of Wind and Wave 259 

Day We Raised the Roof Ill 

Dead Calm 265 

Death Throes 50 

Details of Husbandry 66 

Diagonal Braced Boarding 167 

Dining Room, Barreled Ceiling. 180 

Dining Room Window 177 

Diving 163 

Diving Pier 171,256 

Diverse Dives of Divers 255 

Dodo, the Glutton 12, 114 

Doggies 114 

Dogs 50 

Dogs and Their Masters 151 

Dogs of High Degree 20 

"Don't" 20 

Door of Hospitality 177 

Door to the Loggia 177 

Drachenfels 142 

Drachenfels, Billiard Room, 

Fireplace 149 



Drachenfels, Dining Room .... 149 

East Front 148 

Lawns of 149 

North Entrance 148 

South Front 148 

Twelve-foot Stair 149 

Each Planned to Fit the Site... 42 

Ear-labeled 14 

East Terrace Entrance 4 

Easterly on the Rocks 182 

Eaton's Neck 196 

Edging the Sea 185 

Eighteen-foot Wide Bay 177 

Elementals 156 

Embowered Farm House 56 

Embracing Trees 148 

English Windows 172, 185 

Entering the Cave 204 

Entrance Gate, Summer 128 

Entrance Gate, Winter 128 

Entrance Hall 200, 203 

Entrance Hall of Pinnacle 210 

Entrance to Hillcrest Farm and 

Manor 128 

Entrance to Yacht Pier 185 

Esplanade 181, 191 

Esplanade Canopy 168 

Evening 16 

Expecting Callers 12 

Exuberance of Youth 6 

Fairview 270 

Fallen Grandeur 68 

Falls, Boundary of 64 

Falls, Major 44, 50 

Falls That Really Fall 64 

Farm as We Found It and How 

We Changed It 36 

Farm Dooryard 54 

Farm Hennery 114 

Farm House 42 

Farm House and Its Next Door 

Neighbor 44 

Farm Lawn 21, 54 

Farm Leaks 48 

Farm Views 31, 36, 54, 70 

Farm Warder 30 

Fifteen-foot Doorway 279 

Fifty-foot Dive 255 

Final Stopping Place 32 

Fireplace with Ten-foot Eight- 
inch Opening 187 

First House on Water Front... 253 
First Steps in Building Mania.. 245 

First Swimming Lesson 256 

Fisher Folk 271 

Fishing 286 

Fishing from the Veranda 

Extension 202 

Fishing in Comfort 195 

Five View Points on the Farm. 64 
Flagpole 201 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Flames Glowing up Chimney. . . 178 
Floor Plans : 

Bellerica, Crags, Fairview, 
Tiny Cote, Tree Top, White 

Rock 269, 336 

Breezemont, Buena Vista, Hill- 
crest House, Stony Crest... 109 

Flying Arch 176, 182, 185, 196 

Forces Known and Unknown... 156 

Forest Primeval 117 

Foundation Work for Gazebo.. 201 

Fountain 191 

Four Seasons on the Farm 30 

Freedom of the Wild 276 

Frisky 182, 263 

From Boat to Veranda 207 

From Shack to Mansion 50 

From Skeleton to Finished 

Product 166 

From the Ground Upward 166 

Frontispiece : Farm as We Found 
It and How We Changed Its 

Face and Sky Line 

Frozen Waves 280 

Furling Sail 266 

Gables 42, 46, 113 

Gargoyle Grotesque 177 

Gateway 165 

Gathering and Gathered Storm . . 280 

Gazebo, Building of 167, 195 

Geologist's Paradise 206 

Georgian Window 195 

Getting under Way 141 

Glanders Consultation 8 

Glass Walled Room 234 

Glimpses of the Sea 176 

Going, Going, Gone ! 255 

Grapery Hot-bed Sash 52 

Grip of Ice King 171 

Grotto 168, 196, 202 

Grotto Labyrinths 202 

Growing from Cliff 112 

Guarded Doorway 186 

Guarded Step 178 

Harbor 199 

Harbor Entrance 205 

Harbor Mew 159 

Hav Barn 16 

Hay Crop 48 

Haying 48 

Headed for the Mooring 272 

Health Building 260 

Heartsease 149, 192, 273 

Herd of Cattle 14 

Heydey Days 263 

Hilarious Artemus 24 

Hillcrest Farm 4, 46, 54 

Hillcrest Farm and Its- Nearest 

Neighbor 131 

Hillcrest, the Metamorphosi-d 

Farm 137 



Pergola, and 



Hillcrest House : 
Well House, 

Greenhouse 125 

Arch, and Arch, and Arch.... 127 

Bold Bare Site 123 

Framing Veranda Roof 126 

Gardens 125 

Gym. and Porte Cochere 92 

Men Behind Hammer and 

Saw 123 

On the Stocks 123 

Stables 40 

Stone- framed Landscape 
Where Seven Arches Meet 127 

Hot-bed Sash Greenhouse 54 

Pergola 123 

Porte Cochere Fireplace 123 

Rushing Work 126 

Site 120 

Skeleton in Veranda 

Squaring the Sills 126 

Steps and Caps Are Single 

Stones 123 

Hillcrest House 

38, 46, 48, 106, 119, 121 

Hillcrest House Floor Plans 109 

Hilltop 38, 40, 46, 56, 105 

Hilltop Floor Plans 106 

Home 245 

Home from Nome 8 

Home Greeter, Double A 28 

Home of the Commoners 16 

Horse Barn 17, 30 

Horse Home 23 

House Spacing 112 

House That Edged a Forest 148 

House That Spanned a City 

Block Ill 

House That Strolled Inland... 32 
How the Unassuming Acres 

Changed Front 40 

How We Deadened a Floor.... 275 
Humble Servitors 66 

Ice-bordered Coast Line 164 

Ice-bound Coast 250 

Ice Field 136 

Ice Field Out of Commission. 50, 65 

Ice King's Grip 171 

Ice Pond 16 

Ice-tied Waters 253 

Icicled Clothes Line 286 

Igloo 12 

Indented Platform 202 

Infancy, Youth and Age 186 

Infront and Outfront of Crags 262 

Interior Glass Doors 178 

In the Shadow, — in the Sun- 
light—of Life 182 

Inspecting the Topsail 256 

Island House 148, 150 

Island Road 148 

January Plunge 255 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Joy of the Manse 10 

Joy Unconfined 10 

Joys of Farming 10 

Laddie 8, 260 

Laddie Stood for Absolute 

Fealty 260 

Land and Water Home 279 

Landing at the Pier 176 

Land-locked Harbor 196 

Land-locked Motor Boat Lagoon 173 

Last Boat 264 

Last of Thirty Steps in Building 161 

Laundry Tubs 194 

Lawn 165, 195 

Laze of the Sea 266 

Leaves of Oaks of Mamre 82 

Leaving Its Centurv Home 32 

Ledges .'...42, 46, 76, 140 

First Framing 141 

Feudal Tower 141 

Mediaeval Slit Window 141 

Ledge Landing Steps at Low 

Tide 192 

Left by the Glacier 201 

Leo, Warder of Farm Gates.... 25 

Leviathan Half Buried 185 

Library 190 

Life ( 186 

Life's Beginning 114 

Lightning 6 

Lightning, the Space Conqueror 12 

Limpid Pool 44 

Little Mother 10 

Live and Dead Waters 259 

Living Hobby Horse 20 

Living Picture 20 

Living Room, East Side 172 

Lofty Entrance Hall 177 

Log Splitting 276 

Long Way from Shore 256 

Lookout 280 

Lotus Eating Days for Lad and 

Laddie 

Lower Falls 56 

Low Tide 181 

Maine Coast in Connecticut.... 253 

Making a Landing 173 

Manorial and in Some Features 

Baronial 143 

Man's Combat with Nature 201 

Marooned Clothes Reel 272 

Marquee on Lawn 114 

Marquise 176, 185 

Mayflower Cedar 258 

Meeting the Train 151 

Mediaeval Stair 112 

Metamorphosed Farm 50 

Mezzanine Floor 178 

Mianus, The 50 

Mianus Rapids 56 

Midnight Photo 280 

Mile Off Shore 256 

Milking Time 14 



Million Oysters 196 

Minstrels' Balcony 177, 178 

Mirage Rooms 170 

Modernized Farm House 136 

Mood Antipodal 10 

Mooring 272 

Moorish Castle 114 

Morning Canter 10 

Motor Boat Cave 176 

Motor Boat Cave under Ver- 
anda 279 

Motor That Aloved the House.. 32 

Munyon 24, 30 

Murder Will Out 39 

Musicians' Balcony 200 

Nearing the Wire 44 

Neil 165 

New Arrival 114 

New Entrance, Looking South.. 128 
Nineteen Steps in Building Plus 

Eight Steps More 167 

No! It's a Dog 151 

No Pitfalls 256 

North Front 165 

Not an Eyelash Moved 10 

Now 285 

Number Ten 255 

Oak of Two and One-half Cen- 
turies 168 

Off! 181 

Off for Cape Ann 18 

Off for School 18 

"On Guard To-Night" 196 

On Mischief Bent 253 

On the Beach 198 

On the Shores of Time and 

Long Island Sound 256 

Once in Twenty Years 253 

One Goal 256 

One Invoice of Live Stock 18 

One of the Advantages of 

Water Front Life 186 

One Trio 20 

Open Door 176 

Open Sound Front 160 

Orchard 50 

Original Farm House 36 

Our Boats 266 

Our First Boat 264 

Outdoor Bedroom 176 

Outf ront and Inf ront 169 

Outlook from Farm 137 

Outside Landing Steps, Pier 

and Swimming Pool 192 

Panel along Graffito Lines 195 

Pastime and Labor on the Farm 114 

Pasture Bars 56 

Paul Revere Knocker 217 

Pennv a Liner to a Yacht 264 

Pergola 176, 185 

Pergolad Clothes Yard 191 

Perpendicular 255 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Pets of High Degree 20 

Picknicing 192 

Picture Window 173 

Pictured Tale of a Tail 28 

Pier and Landing Steps 159 

Pier, Lounging Corner 184 

] 'iggery, Outdoor 16 

Pin Money 10, 26 

Pinnacle .' 210, 211 

Cellar 32 

East < 'uter Front 210 

Wes1 Inner Front 210 

Pinnacle Site 50 

Pinnacle, the House Ideal 210 

Pioneer Bungalowing 250, 268 

Placidity 50 

Plav Side of Farming 6 

Playing at Work 66 

Polishing the Grounds 42, 60 

Porch Beamed Ceiling 176 

Porch Room 168, 172, 198 

Porch Room, South and West.. 175 

Portahle House 253 

Porte Cochere 50 

Posing 263 

Posts Unscreened 70 

Posts Wider at Top 147 

Primitive Lahor Saver 123 

Princeton Tiger 26 

Profitless Scythe 48 

Racial Divisions 196 

Rafting 286 

Rain Coming 56 

Raising Old Glory 176 

Rapids of the Mianus 50 

Reaching for the Goal 181 

Ready for Calking Iron 272 

Ready for the Curtains 52 

Red Towers, Conservatory 76 

Red Towers 46, 153 

Responsibility 10 

Restcliff ..." 250, 252 

Restful Work 196 

Ribs of Wreck 280 

Robins' Nest on the Mowing 

Knives 56 

Rock-ribbed Shore 267 

R( ick Esplanade 181 

Ri mgh Landing Spot 280 

Roughed-out Pier 285 

Rugged Lee Shore 250 

Rugged Stone Walls 123 

Sailing the Deep Blue Sea 265 

Scant Headway 266 

Scoop Dive 279 

Scudding to Harbor 263 

Sea Boulders 274, 278, 279 

Built Over the Sea 278 

Inglenook 278 

Northeast Front 278 

Ship-kneed Brackets 278 

Sea Boulder Chimney Building.. 275 



Second Step in Building Mania 246 

Seedling Pound Apple Tree 54 

Seeing One's Self 296 

Self-sufficiency of Youth 255 

Servants' Entrance 202 

Servants' Stair 192 

Service (late 165, 191, 201 

Service Gate, Outward 205 

Service Path 201 

Shacks Edging Break-neck Hill 50 

Shaded Breeze Point 195 

Shadow Pictures 256 

Sheltered Harbor 164, 186 

Sheltered Lagoon 179 

Shelving Beach 202 

Ship-kneed Brackets 275 

Ship-shape 266 

Shore Front of Restcliff 285 

Shore Rocks 209 

Shore Rocks, Floor Plan 162 

Shore Rocks Site 160, 163 

Shoulder Pet 18 

Shower 185 

shrub and Tree Growth 4 

Siamese Twins 256 

Silo and Cattle Barn 56 

Sinele Door 203 

Single Door, 7x9 191 

Siren in Apple Orchard 40 

Site of Shore Rocks 263 

Sitting on the Ribs of Wreck.. 280 

Sleeping Porch 

170, 176. 177, 178, 194 

Solid Balustrade 185 

Soon to Leave Home 20 

Southwest Corner 196 

S. O. S 202 

Somersaulting 6 

Spaced to Avoid Conflict 48 

Spot 8, 67 

Staircase Hall 197, 203 

Staircase Hall of Pinnacle 210 

Stairway Twenty Feet Wide 190 

Step from Veranda to Deck.... 195 

Steps in Building 52 

Steps to the Beach 186 

Steps to the Yacht Pier 186 

Still and Quick Life 285 

Still Life 151 

Stilts 50 

Stirring the Waters 285 

Si one and Wood Skeleton 127 

Stone Arch 201 

Stone Barriers 30 

Stone Bulwark 182 

Stone Flower Cup 201 

Stone Framed Landscape 119 

Stonehenge 130 

Stone Pillar 201 

Stone Shark 259 

Stonycrest 40, 42, 46, 70 

First Year. 

Fifth Year. 



XIV 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Stonycrest Addition 108 

Construction 108 

Floor Plans 109, 110 

Details Ill 

Ingle 52 

Finished 151 

Storm-beaten Undercliff 259 

Storm King 42, 46, 129 

Storm King's Architect 114 

Studio Window 177 

Study in Rock Formation 181 

Summer Idyl 266 

Summer Stream 67 

Summer Tent 12 

Swimming Goal 181 

Swimming Pool 207 

Swinging the Compass from 

North to South 143 

Swirling, Half-frozen Waters... 64 

Swirling Rapids 44, 70 

Take Us Off 186 

Taromina 264 

Taurus 16 

Temporary Visitor 6 

Ten Feet of Icicles ; Ten Feet 

of Verdure 298 

Tenderfoot 12 

Tennysonian Roof 117 

Things That Happened to the 

Farm 46 

Thoroughbreds 12 

Three of the Changes 38 

Three Type Veranda 298 

Three Worlds 279 

Tigers of Three Degrees 265 

Tiled Roof and Sides of Red 

Towers 76 

Tiled Yacht Pier 179, 181 

Tiny Cote 258 

Tobogganing 6 

"Too Small" (Cot) 60 

Topsy, Horse of Courage 18, 56 

Topsy Turvying Nature 44 

To the Gazebo 202 

Training for Wild West Show.. 8 

Tree and Shrub Growth 107 

Tree Growing through Veranda 298 

Tree Room 192 

Treeless 286 

Treeless Knoll 106 

Tudor Arch 176, 182, 195 

"Turn In, the Water's Fine" .... 256 

Twelve-foot Stairway 145 

Twin Chimneys 142, 148 

Two and One-half Centuries . . . 256 

Two Colonels 8 

Two Hundred and Twenty-five 

Windows 166 



Two-mile Floral Border 44, 54 

Two of Our Bungalows 279 

Under Full Headway 32 

Underhill House 76 

Under the Apple Blossoms 114 

Unhappy Family 20 

United Family 114 

Upper Balcony 173, 174, 176 

Utilizing Stone Walls Ill 

Vacation 8 

Varied Action 186 

Veranda 186 

Viburnum Plicatum 56 

View from Gazebo 185 

View from Heartsease 192 

View of the Offing 202 

View Through Sea Boulders.... 275 

Vine-screened Ice House 114 

Waiting at the Gate 6 

Wash Day at the Cot 6 

Wayside 12, 18, 30, 32, 76 

Well 10 

Well. What's Wanted 20 

West End of Pier 184 

West Front 167, 169 

Western Slope 16 

What the Years Brought 165 

When Golf Was Young 50 

When Man Was Young 201 

Where Some of the Sturm 

Waves Landed 141 

Whimbrel 265 

White Fanged Waves 201 

White Rock ;■•;••■ • 158 - 25 °, 

Wide Door of Hospitality 203 

Wide Veranda 147 

Wildwood Lodge Foundation. 52, 64 

Winding Stairs 143 

Windows and Doors 177 

Winter Torrent 68 

Wireless Pole 201 

Wireless Room 178 

Wireless Station 179 

W. L. S 259 

Wonder Tree 78, 151 

Woodland 148 

Woodsy Drive o2 

Working Out Interior Details.. 177 

Yachtsman's Shelter 159 

Yearly Cruises 267 

"Yes, It's a House" 60 

Young Life 266 

Youthful Prowess 8 



FOREWORD 



"Oh, . . . that mine adversary had written a book." 

TO that man "whose heart within him burns" to build, as well 
as own, his own roof-tree, the following record may be of 
interest. It is composed, with not over a dozen exceptions, of 
features used by the author in his thirty-five years' experience 
in country living and building, including the transformation of 
a rough farm into a residential park at an expense aggregating 
over one million dollars. 

An endeavor has been made to give concrete information 
in compact, easily handled form, needed by the layman, and to lead 
the reader from shack to mansion, through the intermediates of plat- 
form tented camp, bungalow, ordinary country house, and elaborate 
villa. Even many of the features used in Pinnacle, the "House Ideal," 
can be adapted to and made serviceable in less expensive houses. 

The thousand and more original photographs include country 
living in many of its phases, different stages of building, and emphasize 
improvement in the year by year growth of tree and shrub. 

A treatise on the making of a real country place must be inclu- 
sive. One member of a family may be interested in the building 
of a bungalow, another desires an elaborate villa and a knowledge 
of the construction of both. A third turns only to the pages that 
treat of the two mile arboretum strip of trees, shrubs, and flowers, 
while a fourth loves dogs, horses, and cattle, and another's realm of 
happiness is represented by birds and butterflies. The girls' and boys' 
Nirvana ranges from a real planned and pictured playhouse to pets — 
chipmunks and turtles; lambs and Shetlands — and from tobogganing 
and snow house building to stunts in boating and bathing, while the 
family as a whole are interested in a safe and sane plan to gain a 
competence. 

The question asked by many seekers after country life, "Can I 
make my little farm pay, or what proportion of the expense will it 
carry," is answered from experience, and a way is shown for the city 
clerk with a comparatively modest income to become independent 
within ten years. 

The indices of text and illustrations are intended to give a fairly 
complete synopsis in a ten minute perusal of the subject matter of 
"How to Make a Country Place", which includes hints on amateur 
farming, horticulture, villa and bungalow building, and general 
country development, as attempted by an amateur. 

It is hoped that some who have never built will be sufficiently 
interested to join the ranks of those Progressives to whom certain 
solons (?) of the race quote with sardonic joy that proverb of the pessi- 
mist, "Fools build for the wise." 



HILLCREST FARM 




THE OLD FARM HOUSE THAT QUEENED 
OUR ORIGINAL ACREAGE. 




AFTER IT WAS MODERNIZED. 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY 

PLACE 



CHAPTER I. 



The Farm — Remodeling the Farm House — Hygiene — 

Water Supply — Sewage — Farm Lawn — Animals — The 

Dairy — Poultry — Bees — Star Gazing. 

FROM cliff dwelling to tilling the soil was a long leap, but 
when made enabled me to give full sway to the building mania 
which asserted itself when I purchased "Our Farm," though we 
owned it several years before development was well under way. 

When farming loomed as an Eldorado, I interviewed Dr. Hexa- 
mer of the American Agriculturist as to his opinion of the money- 
making possibilities for the amateur farmer, and he frankly gave 
his advice. Whether favorable or otherwise the reader shall judge, 
but I proceeded to farm, as Shakespeare puts it, "in my salad days 
when I was green." 

Here is the old farm house that queened the seventy-two 
acres of my first purchase, afterward increased by buying adjacent 
farms to two hundred and fifty acres of undulating land, rocky knoll 
and wooded cliffside, bordering a swiftly coursing river. Here, too, 
are the modernized farm house, the hay, horse and cattle barns, silo, 
paddocks and gardens, the arboretum and the new entrance. In 
fact, the photographs show some things that happened to those modest, 
unassuming acres during the run of the building fever. 

A red letter day was our first day of ownership of Hillcrest 
Farm. The deed had been recorded by the town clerk; I was a 
landed proprietor, and seemed to breathe more deeply as the vision 
of farm ownership became a realitv. 

The Fallacious Nightmare Mortgage. 

After the recording of the first paper came the filing of the 
second, the mortgage, that nightmare of the average farmer, but 
which, after all, if rightly placed and the interest promptly met, 
is but a temporary bugbear, and can and should be made a stepping- 
stone to final independence. If your loan is a safe one the Savings 
Bank is generally as anxious to get it as you are to make it. 



2 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

The farm house was picturesquely located, but not easily altered, 
though we spent upward of five thousand dollars in the attempt, only 
to find that the old house was an old house still. 

For instance, when the wind blew, windows rattled distractingly 
until a wiseacre visitor suggested wooden wedges at the end of short 
chains fastened to the trim of each window. 

Remodeling the Farm House. 

Living in an old or remodeled house gives an opportunity 
for thinking up makeshifts and utilizing space. More room for 
books in the narrow library was obtained by extending bookshelves 
over the window tops, also into a chimney jog. Finding the old 
house difficult to heat, we discovered that a hinged wooden cover, 
tightly padded with felt at all edges, and balanced by window weights, 
closing-in the attic stairway, prevented heat from escaping to that 
unused quarter of the house — an unrailed attic stair opening, a lighted 
kerosene lamp, a heedless step, once presaged dire calamity. In a 
corner of the sitting room closet a trap door and ladder steps made a 
short cut to the furnace and cellar wood pile. Perhaps some of the 
devices were "skimble scamble," but they made for comfort. 

Kitchen and Pantries. 

The preference was for a small kitchen and large pantries, so 
we galleyed the range end of the big farm house kitchen and lessened 
the tramp across it to the dining room by building a ceiled-in butler's 
pantry which also aided in confining kitchen odors and clatter to 
that part of the house. In one corner of the room was hinged a 
drop shelf, and another along one side wall, while a cooking table 
fitted with convenient under shelf journeyed easily across the room 
on ball-bearing casters. Many a step to the housekeeping pantry 
was saved by a cupboard of translucent glass in the lower sash of 
a north window. Two windows placed on opposite sides of the 
food storage pantry quickly forced through it the ordinarily stagnant 
air of midsummer. That extra window owed us nothing, as it 
cheated the sour microbe out of many a meal. Shelves in this pantry 
were of slate.* Both pantry and kitchen sinks were broad and fairly 
deep, lessening breakage, and set five inches higher than usual, 
with draining boards extra wide and long. One defaced copper sink 
we put in fine condition, even for hot water use, by a coat of prepared 
aluminum paint. Walls and floor shone with linoleum in one pattern 
of light shade. 

The range was inset with a metal Hap twelve inches wide 
that crossed its upper front close to ceiling line and formed a hood 
and started heat and odors chimneyward. A fireless cooker was 
a helpful cog in the kitchen machinery. 

*A domesticated toad for two years lived in a dark'corner of the cellar pantry and made 
a "clean sweep" of roach, water bug, and fly and beat pussy at driving away theelusive mouse. 



VANDALIZING THE REVERED PAST 3 

A kitchen settle not only settled, but tabled; it also stored coal 
and kindling. One broad settle, its cover seat securely hasped, was 
rilled with cord wood through a hinged panel in the house wall. 

A force pump in the kitchen connected with the well had a shut- 
off valve, enabling one to pump directly into the caraffe instead of the 
up-attic, planished copper-lined tank installed in case of accident to 
the ram. A water pipe over the range conveniently filled wash boiler 
and kettle. 

Room of Comfort. 

A practical makeshift, for not always did our out-of-a-rut inno- 
vations hit the bull's eye, was to place the range hot water boiler flat- 
wise in a pokehole jog under the eaves adjoining a bathroom. This 
jog was asbestos-lined, and its whole front hinged with double doors 
that could be hooked back to the side wall, making the bathroom 
synonym of comfort. 

Heating. 

One experiment was a Baltimore heater, while another was to 
utilize the kitchen range by using an additional hot water back appli- 
ance connected by pipes and radiators with a small open safety 
expansion tank in the attic. A third was a perforated sleeve and 
radiator drum surrounding the galvanized smoke flue that, protected 
at the floors by soapstone collars, entered the chimney high under the 
attic ridge. An ell room was heated by the unhygienic oxygen eating 
oil stove, but placed within a specially built sheet iron cylinder stove, 
flue connected ; another was heated and ventilated by an oil lamp 
treated in like manner. 
Vandalizing the Revered Past.* 

Substantial oak beam and girder construction made it possible 
to remove partitions, cut through doorways, inset bookshelves, and 
cupboards in plastered walls, change stair openings, etc., without 
regard to consequences, all radical improvements made at trifling 
cost — convincing proof that destruction is easier than construction. 
With bars once lowered for the entrance of minor improvements 
big ones speedily elbowed their way to the fore. 

While the carpenters were ripping into the farm house fore and 
aft, we increased the area of the small dining room by still farther 
thefts from the kitchen. Sufficient of the wall w y as torn through to 
inset a sideboard and coal and wood cupboard, the latter serving 
also as a kitchen shelf, while a large bay window thrown out to 
the north revealed a cattle yard, but it had to be, as it facili- 
tated "waitin' on table." Even Spot, the fox terrier, and Angora 
Aurea, the only cat, shared in the improvements, as a lower panel of 

:K 'The farm house was built along the lines of those old houses of the late 17th and early 
18th centuries that sometimes required three years to build, when the 8 x 12 and 12 x 16 
beams and girts were cut in the woods and sledded in winter to the site and at leisure adzed 
into shape. All spikes, nails, and pegs were hand wrought and later a neighborhood raising 
whipped the new house into line. 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE. EAST TERRACE EMTRATiCE 



THE FARM HOUSE, OUTBUILDINGS, AND APPROACH 



BOX GREENERY WINDOW 5 

the dining room door was so adjusted that they could come and go 
at will. 

The Keeping Room. 

It had long been our ambition to have an old-fashioned keeping 
room, and we tried it in the farm house. It was equipped with 
the usual urn-crowned corner cupboards, in the main peopled with 
mementoes and reminders of Revolutionary days. The wainscoting 
came from an old Colonial house we had ruthlessly torn from its two 
hundred year old anchorage. That wainscot had never clashed with 
a paint brush, and frequent holy-stonings by guile dame and house- 
maid had effected a satin polish. 

A double floor in two and one-half inch widths was laid on the 
first story for warmth. Less width, less shrinkage. 

Inexpensive chair rails and picture moldings prevented injury 
to plastered walls and served as members in the dado and frieze scheme 
in dining room and library. 

A low ceiling (high ceilings do not necessarily mean pure air, 
location of air inlet and outlet is the essential) made a short climb 
hut the crooked, cramped turn in the stairway forced ungainly fur- 
niture to travel through a window. 

We planned a first floor bedroom for which convenience calls in 
most farm houses, and altered the conventional parlor into a studio-den. 

A monastery sawbuck table with ebonized oak plank top har- 
monized with the long narrow dining room, and was easily dis- 
mantled when additional space w T as needed for dances or games. 

Chimney breasts in several rooms we cemented, and while yet 
moist imprinted with a butter mold, perpetrating the same radical- 
ism in the den, the effect rendered more startling by sprinkling the 
design while still wet with a mixture of gold, silver, and bronze 
powder. To balance the roof line and save a gable window on the 
second story a chimney was supported on trolley irons which crossed 
attic floor beams. A fireplace outside a chimney breast was thus 
carried. 

I pstairs we again gleefully lapsed to the antique. The original 
wide floor boards, kiln dried by Father Time for full two centuries, 
were firmly nailed down, old tacks removed, cracks and nail holes 
either calked, white-leaded, or puttied, and the beautiful grain of 
wood brought out by sand-papering, filling, waxing and polishing. 
When that second floor was furnished with round and elliptical rugs 
(with rubber bands sewed on the under side to keep them from slip- 
ping), high posters with canopied testers, bed steps, lowboys, and 
eagle-crowned gilt mirrors, our ennuied city guest slept in another 
and far more restful world. 

Box Greenery Window. 

Plants were banished from all sleeping rooms, but a bay in the 
morning room made a bower of bloom, and in the south sewing room, 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE -WHEEL 
WHICH GROUND 
CORMFOR 
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COMITEIICEMEMT"/ HOSTILITIES 




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WAITING AT THE GATE 




PLAY SIDE OF FARMING. 



MIASMATIC CELLARS 7 

supported by heavy wooden brackets, a box-greenery-window pro- 
jected about eighteen inches from the house line, imprisoning a bit 
of the June of garden, wood, and field the entire year. 

In putting on a new roof, the garret was heightened two feet; 
extra expense light, but comfort greater in that "brain room of the 
world." 

Pent eaves shaded one row of second story windows and broke 
the stiff high wall line, and carved barge or verge boards edged the 
gables. 

The Outshot. 

One old time and attractive external feature, the long tobog- 
gan roof of the "outshot," reached from the ridge to within six feet 
of the ground. 

The wide verandas we built on the south, east and west added 
vastly to comfort, while the staircase hall tacked to the southeast 
corner and ceiled to the peak made a more suitable entrance, at the 
same time affording a fine background for pictures, Fiji Island spears, 
boarding pikes from a privateer of 1812, a sword fish, a pair of snow 
shoes, and other remnants of a collecting fever which at one time 
included stamps, coins, autographs and curios. Never again, how- 
ever, will we misuse a glorious southern exposure for entrance and 
hall, or wood-ceil an interior instead of plastering it. We plead 
guilty to having installed lightning rods, hnials, iron cresting, and a 
weather vane. 

A couple of windows were unfortunately set diamond-wise 
in the staircase hall. Other transformations included three bal- 
conies, that meant sun and air-bathed bedding and raiment, as 
well as occasional naps in the open above the second story country 
dust line — just one-tenth of the twenty stories it generally takes in 
the city to banish the duster. One of these balconies served as 
an outdoor bedroom, another for a lookout close to the chimney top, 
(which, by the way, was Hat stone-capped to make it draw better, 
instead of flaunting aloft that libel against good taste, a cowl-capped 
zinc-swiveled chimney pot) and the third as a sun parlor. 

The old rule of the house painter of painting every third year the 
exterior anil every seventh the interior we smithereened by giving 
the exterior trim a coat of oil between times. In this way the out- 
side paint lasted five years, and as the interior, aside from rooms fin- 
ished in white enamel, was treated with non-odorous stain, polished, 
and rubbed down, we needed no cast iron rule. 

Miasmatic Cellars. 

Many changes were made in the cellar. The milk storage 
excavation, directly at the foot of the stairs, we at once filled in, pre- 
venting a second tumble. A brick cistern holding at times stagnant 
unaerated rain water was demolished, when, whisper it lightly, no 
less than a half dozen rat skeletons, a defunct cat and some kittens 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE- 
CONS"ULTATTOK 
HAS H& 

CaLAhde.'rS? 






SPOT- THE- UI1C0WABL.E- UM.VraiPPABL.E- UNDRTVAKLE' 
"YOUTHFUL PROWE-SS 



VACATION. 



UNFAILING It .ITER SUPPLY 9 

were found. We built another cistern outside underground, dividing 

it unequally by a brick wall. Entering the smaller compartment, par- 
tially packed with charcoal, the water gradually percolated through 
the wall into the larger, giving us the best sort of filtered soft water, 
uncontaminated by soil impurities, roofs and cypress gutters being 
left unstained by creosote and kept scrupulously clean. Leader 
connections for convenient cleansing were placed close to an attic 
window, protected by wire leaf guards, the spout pipe for two 
feet daring out four inches where it connected with the gutter. In 
order to thoroughly Hush the roof before using the c stern, a two-foot 
spout section near the ground swiveled at will. In a downpour ten 
minutes of diverted roof washings gave us pure cistern water. A 
crimped spout prevented ice splitting but was not as easily cared for. 
The cellar was first underdrained from without and within, floor 
dug over, soil removed, and clean gravel substituted, then grouted 
and cemented and ceiling tarred and whitewashed to diminish 
fire risk, increased of course by the presence of tar. Side walls 
and Moors were also tarred, the surface being roughened to 
hold a finishing coat of cement, outside walls and footing courses 
cemented and tarred, and tile laid at the base. Let everything 
go until that cellar is thoroughly revamped. You will naturally 
co-operate with vegetation to purify the grounds about the back door 
where the kitchen drain has been pouring out dish water and 
refuse for a hundred years and more, but five chances to one you will 
ignore the condition of the cellar, and agree with the sophistry of 
the forehanded farmer who sells you the property when he says 
that "the dirt floor is grand to keep vegetables, cider and milk 
in prime condition." If the money you have is a mere pit- 
tance, spend it on the cellar. In a word, drain and cement it inside 
and out, thus eliminating all foul, germ-laden air and matter; put 
in more and larger windows, double sashing for winter if need be, 
instead of boarding and banking up with sill-decaying leaves and 
barn-yard refuse, in warm days rapid breeders of vermin. Make the 
cellar as spick and span as the kitchen and you have won your first 
round in the battle against disease and ill health and outgeneraled, 
if only for the nonce, the white horse and his spectral rider. The 
cemetery rills rapidly enough without using as an additional feeder a 
miasma-breeding cellar. 

Unfailing Water Supply. 

One of the major requisites in country living is an ample water 
supply, especially where much stock is carried. Hand pumps, gaso- 
line engines, compressed air tanks and windmills all have limitations, 
an electric pump, the ideal power, was out of the question, but the 
only alternative, the hydraulic ram, proved a complete success from 
the start. Water was pushed by the drive pipe through the delivery 
pipe a distance of one thousand feet anil raised about one hundred 



10 HOW TO MAKE A COl'XTRY PLACE 




A LITTLE TIOTHER 



"RESPONSIBILITY 



JOYS OF FARMING. 



THE PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE 11 

feet, pipes protected from frost where they entered house, barn and 
outbuildings, and we had water in abundance both summer and 
winter at practical ly no cost after the expense of installation. 

Nearest Approach to a Perpetual Motion Machine. 

The ram, a small affair a few inches square and less than twenty- 
five pounds in weight, was sunk in a dry, frost-proof well only eight 
feet deep on a side hill, hence easily underdrained to get rid of 
surplus water, a greater fall, we found, exerted too much pressure on 
the mechanism. This and the little reservoir about a dozen feet 
square and three feet deep were covered with planks and heaped 
with straw or weeds for winter protection. Though we received at 
the buildings with our lay-out less than one-tenth of the water that 
passed through the pipes feeding the ram it proved more than suffi- 
cient and shared honors with the five per cent, mortgage on the farm, 
that worked day and night. House and barn tanks and cattle 
troughs were always full and the overflow formed a safe shallow 
skating rink for the children in winter and a duckling pond in sum- 
mer, at one end of the roomy wire fence-enclosed poultry yard, and 
the shallow water eased a bit the flurry and worry of the foster 
mother hen. If the supply of water is small and the surplus has 
sufficient fall, parallel lines can be laid starting from lower levels. 
There's hardly a farm worthy the name that cannot have at moderate 
cost a continual water supply without help of the exhausting pump 
handle which should only be used to draw for drinking purposes 
delicious cold water from that rock-dug well that, like pure butter 
and milk, is the stock boast of the average farmer.* New valves 
every two years costing but a trifle were the only expense. 

The water pipe connected with the refrigerator, arid the ice rested 
on a coil of quarter-inch pipe, thus supplying hygienic ice water. 
Refrigerator drainage dripped into a dry well instead of a sewer gas- 
packed cesspool. 

Sanitary Sewage System. 

What to do with sewage at first puzzled us, as it does everyone 
in like surroundings. The solution was sanitary cesspools, made as 
follows,. 

A water-tight stone and cement tank five feet square and six 
feet deep had two compartments, with overflow pipe controlled by 
ball and cock and protected in a frost-proof mound. The valve 
opened automatically, and the liquid contents of the second com- 
partment discharged into three blind drains each about one hundred 
feet long, placed two feet below the grass roots in an orchard 
which sloped toward the west, thus escaping many a nipping frost. 
The main compartment was cleaned each winter, and copperas or 

On one of our farms we installed a double action ram. using the muddy wan r of a 
running brook to force pure spring water to house and barns. 



12 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE SUMMER TET1T 



THOROUGHBREDS. 



CONQUEST OF SEWAGE DANGERS 13 

some other disinfectant thrown in lavishly, though it often seemed 
unnecessary, so well did the system work in connection with our house 
plumbing, which, as well as the cesspool, was thoroughly hack-aired, 
and stood perfectly the peppermint medicine poured down the 
throated pipes to ascertain sewer gas conditions. This was done every 
six months, the day we paid the hank interest on the mortgage. The 
connecting pipe was iron instead of tile. 

Years afterward in a Sound front cottage we installed the same 
style of cement tank with a two-inch overflow pipe extending well into 
the Sound, and controlled by a gate-valve. Once a week, at night on 
the outgoing tide, opening the valve for an hour emptied the water 
sewage tank, and the other compartment was cleaned in the winter, 
as on the hill. This system proved simple, safe, sane, sanitary and 
successful. 

Conquest of Sewage Danger. 

From the time when our English ancestors hibernated like bears in 
a round neolithic pennpit, and later 'when king and churl alike dug 
open sewers in the floors of their dwellings, unto the dawm of modern 
conveniences when insanitary plumbing forced deadly sewer gas into 
the blood, men, like ripened grain, have fallen unnecessarily by the 
million before the steel of the "grim reaper." Yet through all these 
years of self destruction, at man's elbow, but tongue tied, stood the 
twin servitors, aerobic and anaerobic, minute organisms, anxious to 
purify his home, throttle burning fevers and lengthen his life. Har- 
nessed for the first time in the nineteenth century, they are doing 
systematic yeoman service. As absolute darkness is an essential in 
the work of the anaerobic microbe, while he transmutes fetid matter 
into the gaseous state, cesspools must be about six feet deep, yet with 
suitable air vent. Preliminary disintegrating surface work is per- 
formed by the oxygenic aerobic, that floats on the surface and passes 
down to his partner for final disposal all refuse. 

We put these twin servitors to work in the bacteria-septic-tanks 
afterward installed in one of our country places and they purified 
sewage' in about twenty-four hours. The apparatus consisted of 
three siphon connected tanks — sewage tank, weir tank, and disin- 
fecting tank. The air vent was a small well braced galvanized iron 
pipo flag pole open at the top, giving an exceptional draught. 

The installation of two main line speaking tubes ended our list 
of changes. Years afterward we realized that "striving to better, oft 
we mar," and while sugar-loaf-tower and aggressive excrescence 
here and impudent protruberance there gave greater convenience, the 
rural restfulness of the old farm house had vanished. Better a bed 
of ashes and a Phoenix-risen new house. From destruction of the 
old generally springs a newer and better construction. 



14 



H0 T J 7 TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 







ONE OF THE TW1WS 



THE OTHER 



::a:i laj:;i::j svj 



STONE WALLS VERSUS ROADS 15 

Stone Walls Versus Roads. 

Within a year a development began which, when completed, 
changed the entire aspect of the farm. The first step was to make 
stone ballasted main roads, well underdrained, utilizing material 
taken from the three miles of stone walls that straggled irregularly 
across ravine and pasture, swamp and hillock, some broad enough 
to hold a coach and four on their ivy, woodbine, and blackberry 
vine-clad tops. These old walls were the hide-and-seek rendezvous 
and racing ground of the saucy fat chipmunk, and their deep, dank 
recesses at times nesting places for the black snake — the non-biting 
constrictor — that so realistically rounds out country life. Quite a 
number of these walls were formed of two distinct evenly faced ram- 
parts, the intervening space filled with small stones, a good old- 
fashioned way of clearing land, and far less shiftless than the piling 
of stones on ledges that occasionally outcrop on the surface. 

Strenuous agronomical efforts required the erection of more hay, 
storage, and cattle barns, also corn cribs, giving a comfortable and 
roomy group of buildings, taking the place of hay ricks, canvas-capped 
stacks, and rough-and-ready shelters. The recurring seasons of seed- 
time and harvest caused bulging silo and o'erflowing barns, when 
again came the lumber teams and carpenters to provide new buildings 
for increasing crops and stock. 

D. L. Moody's White Farm 

Dwight L. Moody, the Evangelist, once told me in most interest- 
ing detail of his white farm — no, not named for the fields of white 
daisies, but from the stock, all snow white, including horses, dogs r 
cats, turkeys, geese, ducks, pigeons — even mice and rabbits for the 
children. Our love for peerless black Topsy and the herd of Dutch 
belted cattle decided us to make the motif black and white, with an 
occasional exception in favor of some animal of rare merit. Much 
against my will, the scheme had to include white daisies, as well as 
wild carrot (Queen Ann's lace), the beautiful tracery of whose 
bloom belies its pernicious, destructive habit. These two horticultural 
vagabonds joined forces with the Canadian thistle, and, after several 
years' struggle, succeeded in depleting by half the one hundred ton 
hay crop, the financial back bone of our farm. 

First on the list of income producers came the dairy. The fore- 
man had purchased in Vermont two carloads of native cows, but these 
were gradually replaced by the herd of Dutch belted. 

Dutch Belted Cattle. 

How well I recollect when I first saw in one of the half dozen 
agricultural papers to which we subscribed the beautiful outlines of 
the Dutch belted (Lackenfeld) cattle, their jet black bodies com- 
pletely encircled with pure white blankets. This led me to Orange 
County, New York, where I joined the Dutch Belted Association, 



16 



HO W TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




QUE OP THE. HAY BARHS 



HOME OF THE COMMONERS. 



D I TCI I BEE TED CA T EL E 



17 




"BLACK PEARL," QUEEN OP THE HERD. 

and purchased registered, ring-nosed Taurus, with a dozen or more 
other prize metal-ear-labeled animals. Within a few years we owned 
a herd of belted cattle whose poetic names exhausted the alphabet, 
for they were forty strong, and at the county fairs drew admiring 
comments as well as honorable mention from both professional 
and amateur for their beautiful markings and graceful forms. 

To be sure, the Aberdeen-Angus Polled, and Red Polled dual 
purpose cattle have an element of greater safety where there are 
children; and among others there were Ayrshire, Guernsey, Devon 
and Jersey, Short-Horned and Holstein-Fresian, both beef and dairy 
types, from which to choose, but beauty, as well as milk yield, counted 
in favor of Dutch belted, many of which, ours among the number, 
were bred from P. T. Barnum's imported animals. At one time the 
live >tock listed sixty cows, including yearlings, a dozen horses and 
colts (the raising of the latter interesting, but expensive), one hundred 
anil iift\ pigs and shotes, more or less, and poultry in goodly quantity. 



Milk. 

At this time the income from the dairy business averaged about 
$450 per month — gross. Delivery wagons marked "Hillcrest Farm," 
pictured a Dutch belted cow — a sort of coat of arms and guarantee 
to our clientele that we kept cows, and that the milk wasn't 
"boughten." Milk was weighed anil recorded to the credit of each 
high bred milch cow on the score card hung beside her photograph. 
The stone spring house, built over a clear pebbly-bedded running 



18 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




CHICKEriS ARE SAFE- 



ONE INVOICE OF LIVE STOCK. 



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OX VERSUS HORSE 19 

brook in which were submerged the cans, kept milk sweet in warmest 
weather. Later it was pasteurized, subduing the elusive coli. 

We also pioneered the milk bottling plan in our section and 
lost some good farm hands because of the additional labor entailed. 
Careless help not only decreased the milk yield, but incurred 
bad debts, due to poor judgment in the matter of credit, 
so before the business proved a loss we sold out the herd, with the 
exception of a prize trio, to a fellow 7 enthusiast in Worcester, 
Massachusetts. As the beautiful, white blanketed creatures started 
down the road for their new T home, another of our pet hobbies was 
unseated. 

With what enthusiasm I took up the theory of the late Donald 
G. Mitchell (Ike Marvel) in regard to keeping cows under open 
field sheds in summer and feeding them daily with freshly-cut fodder. 
But experience taught that it was more economical to make them 
work their own passage for six months at least, in which opinion later 
correspondence with Mr. Mitchell fortified me. Dobbin ( i. e. Victor) 
harnessed to a tread mill ran the Ross cutter which inched corn 
for the silo. Later a gasoline engine not only cut up corn but 
sawed wood, whipped cream into butter, and ran the washing machine, 
until electricity flashed to the fore and banished many limitations. 

Ox Versus Horse. 

Among the animals was a prize yoke of steers, able to move a 
small house. But oxen were soon supplanted, as I fancied that 
their slow T gait counteracted the enthusiasm of the most strenuous man 
I could hire. This theory of mine was somewhat shaken by a farmer 
who argued that a pair of steers cost $125 to $200, live on hay 
in winter and grass in summer, and do not necessarily require grain nor 
roots, while horses that cost in the beginning fully three times as 
much are far more expensive to keep. In ten years the steers 
will bring more than their cost for beef, while the horses are 
practically used up. The steer cultivates as many acres as the horse, 
and if trained to it can be used in a mowing machine, and will 
tire the most enthusiastic plodding ploughman in a days work. 
Evidently the horse has his innings with the farmer because of the 
necessity of getting to market quickly and the pleasure and con- 
venience of driving, but gauged by economics the ox is not the "has- 
been" the horse votary would make him out. Style is one main factor 
in his banishment. Losses from horse diseases often deplete the 
income of that farmer who neglects to insure his stock.* 

The Farm Lawn Versus Hayfield. 

No, my "would-be" farmer; cows on the lawn are not such a 
calamity as cow t s in the corn. This photograph was taken in June 

-Indiscriminate salting causing immoderate thirst sponsored the death by colic of Alice 
our prize brood mare. 



20 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

DOGS i HIGH DEGREE 







SOOIT TO LEAVE- HOME. 



BUNGALOW CHTEH 

PETS OF HIGH DEGREE. 



FARM LAWN VERSUS HAY FIELD 21 



"'■■'" fcT 


bf^jj^i 







THE FARM LAWN. 

just after early haying. When the meadow grass had a setback 
through premature spring grazing, followed by a drought, we 
always hayed and occasionally grazed the lawn. Thorough work, 
including green soiling, application of nitrate of soda, spring and fall 
sprinkling of lawn seed on w T orn places and systematic rolling, did 
much toward making it quite a respectable farm lawn from mid-June 
until winter, spite of our stolen hay crop. We never raked off the 
grass cut by the lawn motor, but left it to enrich the soil. The 
stones that dulled it were buried to form deep draining ditches, and 
after thorough subsoil ploughing, manure was turned under, to 
mechanically, as well as chemically, benefit and enrich the soil. A 
neighbor spent more money in this process than we, going deeper, 
and in twenty years his Lawn never browned during severe drought 
nor under closest clipping, the grass roots delving too deeply to be 
affected. Slightly curving lawn contours edged the farm house, but 
on the main farm lawn no attempt was made to fill abrupt depres- 
sions, smooth hillocks, or break up boulders and blast out ledges, 
having once had experience in that line to the tune of $3,000 or more, 
with no pleasanter result than a yard whose stone boundary wall 
looked like that of a prison. Acres of adjoining land could have 
been bought for the money put into that unattractive wall. With 
this expensive warning, hollows in our farm lawn were padded with 
shrubbery, the most unsightly boulders screened with evergreens, and 
others partly hidden beneath asexual mosses, lichens and saphrophytic 
fungi plants. In the midst of rock-strew n corners were planted vari- 
colored flowering plants, the shade and shelter afforded by the ever- 
greens enabling us to transplant from the forest a wood carpet of 
rare and varied velvety beauty. In one particular copse nature 



22 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

helped in working out that most difficult feature in landscape garden- 
ing, a natural rockery. Steep terraces were never sodded but held 
in place by trailing honeysuckle, transforming the usual gullied slope 
to banks of fragrant bloom and several ungainly stone heaps beauti- 
fied by the creeping pine that licked their edges and ferns of 
varied size and lacy texture that grew in crevice and hollow. Islands 
of evergreen broke the surface of the lawn, and proved citadels 
of refuge for a dozen or more gray squirrels whom Spot the fox 
terrier delighted to hector and terrorize. 

The Sleepless "Varmint." 

Though our lawn was often ridged by that animal machine of 
indefatigable endeavor, the earth-worm-eating-blind ground-mole, 
who, according to the farmer, dies when without food for more than 
a few T hours, a steel pin trap set over his runways made his shadow 
grow steadily less. 

Candlemas Weather Prophet. 

Speaking of shadows, the entrances of a dozen or more ground- 
hog burrows scattered through the pasture lots were faithfully 
watched at Candlemas, February second, for signs of an early spring, 
but Mr. Ground-hog generally saw his shadow, returned to his hole, 
and we stopped sorting seed until the voice of that more reliable 
prophet, "the turtle, was heard in the land." 

Tennis Screen.* 

The upstart mechanical wire tennis screen edging the lawn, 
braced to withstand extra strain, was transformed into a green wall 
of beauty by plentiful plantings of honeysuckle, Dutchman's pipe, 
trumpet vine and moon flower, while the hole-in-the-ground green- 
house grew enough plants to decorate a portion of the same lawn 
with new old-fashioned ribbon gardening, making attractive parterres 
of flowers and in the fall a wide variety of bulbs was set out for 
spring blossoming. One of the most pleasing beds showed a mass of 
yellow and white tulips. 

Beautifying the Ugly Gravel Pit. 

Shrubs that grew good dirt-holding roots surfaced the sides of 
a yawning gravel pit, before planting the steep incline being worked 
to a lesser grade with a horse scoop, and retopped from an adjacent 
pile of loam. Profuse evergreen and shrub planting changed a dismal, 
barren area into a really beautiful semi-ravine, one portion closely 
resembling a grass-grown volcanic crater. Steps of old railway ties, 
spaced with three foot rock and gravel treads prevented washouts 
and half covered with vines led to the bottom of the ravine. The 
spraddling prostrate cypress edged the rocks, among which grew the 
red beaded partridge berry, while near by, at its best in blue splendor, 

:: 'One of the two tennis courts was flooded in winter for a children's safe skating pond. 



THE UGLY GRAI'EL PIT 



23 



was the vinca or periwinkle, and through tin- underbrush that kept 
alive the spirit of the wild trailed the arbutus, which in its place and 
season has no rival. 




OUR HORSE HdMlv 



Four-Footed Friends. 

It would be difficult to say which of the four-footed friends 
of Hillcrest was deepest in our affections. Topsy, that mare of 
mares, whose quick, spirited step night or day heralded her coming, 
was always under voice control with us, but a stranger could not 
curb her speed — indeed, she often seemed to the onlooker to be 
running away, and more than one well disposed person tried to 
stop her and save ( ?) the driver's life. Hills made no difference; for 
nine years she mounted them at top speed, and at one time in midnight 
darkness leaped a deep trench in the highway, overturning barriers 
of planks and barrels, and kept on, with writer, gig and its contents 
uninjured, emphasizing the fact that spirited and intelligent horses 
are often safer drivers than the type represented by stupid, plodding 
Peggoty who gave us a gig tumble we remembered for many a day. 

In one field after a half night's searching we found our prize 
collie, Bobbie Burns, brought to us from Edinburgh. He had 
been deliberately murdered by some miscreant — neighborly gossip 
suspicioned the offender — who fed him with a piece of meat stuffed 
with pounded glass, as discovered by our veterinary at the autopsy. 



24 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




"MUNYON," WHO HELD UP INTRUDERS. 




HILARIUS ARTEMUS, WHO SAT UP AND 
TOOK NOTICE WHEN IT HAPPENED. 



FO I iR-FOOTED FRIENDS 



25 



Bobby was a very discriminating dog, gentle and harmless, and looked 
at us with almost human eyes. He traveled to and from town so 
close to the forefeet of Topsy that it seemed a miracle he was not 




LEO, THE MAGNIFICENT. WATCHER AND WARDER 
OF OUR FARM GATES. 



crushed. We had two romances on the Hill; one Topsy and Bobbie, 
the other Frisky and Spot. Spot, a prize fox-terrier, uncowable, 
und livable, unwhippable, for his young master would watch any- 
thing in any place for hours. His boon and inseparable companion, 
in paddock, pasture, or harness, was Frisky, the pony. Spot's realm 
was in the pony cart when in motion and under it when its owner 
left it by the roadside, watching both pony and packages, until one 
day a heedless vagabond struck the pony, Spot rushed to his defense, 
the wretch shot him, and a second farm tragedy was enacted. 

Eliminating Gruesome Graves from the Farm. 

Fortunately for our peace of mind, no old time family grave- 
yard disfigured the farm, which, however secluded, is depressing, and 



26 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




PRINCETON TIGER IN THE HOME CIRCLE. 

if a funeral cortege crosses the lawn it emphasizes an unpleasant 
division of ownership. This problem was solved in one of our prop- 
erties by purchasing a lot and monument in the town cemetery, 
removing the bodies thereto, obtaining possession of the land, and can- 
celing all rights of way by quitclaim deeds from the heirs. The 
only graveyards on the farm were in Sleepy Hollow Valley, located 
not to contaminate the water supply. There was the last home of 
the horses that served us so faithfully, and of Bobbie and his suc- 
cessors in our affections. The w T illow we planted over the grave of 
Bobbie Burns is to-day a lofty tree. 

The horses never had other masters, but each had pasturage 
in old age, a warm corner in barn and paddock, and a grass-grown 
grave in the valley at life's end. There were Don, Dan, Bess, 
Topsy, Victor, faithful Peggoty and snow-white, speed-crazed 
Lightning, Chester, Frisky, and a score of others, including Alice, the 
daughter of renowned Amy, that never-outdistanced road mare whom 
we brought from Boston only to die within the week. Tragedy and 
pathos were often boon companions. 



Our Horse Boarders. 

One source of income was horse boarders. In box stall, paddock 
or pasture we always had eight or ten both summer and winter, a 
big help in actual cash toward the farm expenses. 



ELIMINATING GRUESOME GRAVES 21 

Dogs. 

In twenty years' farming experience our dogs numbered 
legion, and were mostly of high degree — top notchers, and real com- 
panions, answering our slightest wish if they but understood. 

Leo, the king of all our St. Bernards, never failed in honesty 
and fealty but once, and was even then immediately ashamed 
of his lapse. It happened as follows, ami it must be con- 
fessed the provocation was great : It seems that a roasted 
chicken had been stolen by him from a neighbor's kitchen range. 
It was rescued from under the trap after an argument close to the 
fighting line at the end of a whip, and my friend told me the next day 
that, lacking a neck and wing, his Sunday dinner had lost nothing 
and tasted good* 

The bulldog, Princeton Tiger, college bred with one of the 
boys, was pure white, the farm color. The fighting spirit he devel- 
oped kept him at the end of a chain when on the farm, and when thus 
in bondage everyone except his young master stayed at a respectful 
distance. 

Angora Aurea, called for brevity Double "A," was one never- 
to-be-forgotten home greeter ; the only cat who ever held a 
deep place in my affections. Having no vestige of the cat's occa- 
sional distrust of humans, he never zig-zagged, but came straight 
toward one with the frankness of a dog, and rarely failed after 
a greeting rub to crawl to my shoulder, remaining there for 
hours while I walked about the farm. The memory of those sharp 
claws as he traveled from shoulder to shoulder is still vivid. Brought 
up with dogs, he had no fear of them, but too great confidence in a 
treacherous cur belonging to a neighbor was his undoing, to the 
lasting grief of the household. His epitaph read: "Here lies a good 
cat who like the dog loved humans rather than locality." 

Vega was the proud mother of Leo, and, to be exact, of forty- 
nine other glorious St. Bernards with which we either gladdened or 
saddened forty-nine friends from Philadelphia to Boston. Their 
histories, as far as we followed them, showed many of remark- 
able size but rather testy tempers, but Vega and her royal and 
loyal son Leo were ever models of what dogs should be. We 
found St. Bernards as a rule victims of wanderlust, but for ten years 
Vega watched, night and day, house, barnyard and stock until she 
joined the ranks of the dog majority. 

Some of our dogs were especially gifted in sensorial acuteness 
and when tried out proved fit exponents of and worthy the well 
known tribute of Senator Vest of Missouri to the faithful dog. While 
■attending court in a country town he was urged by the attorneys on 
a dog case to help them, being offered $250 by the plaintiff. Volu- 



■ Puppyhood frequently poached in the chicken yard. When caught in the act instead 
■of strapping the puppy we adopted the old-fashioned cure of strapping the dead chicken firmly 
under the murderer's neck. A couple of weeks of this mental and physical suasion engender- 
ed a dislike for stolen chicken for all time. 



28 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




DOUBLE "A." THE HOME GREETER, MAKING A BEE- 
LI XE FOR HIS OWNER'S SHOULDER. 




VEGA. 
A PICTURED TALE OF A TAIL THAT WAS A TAIL. 



EULOGY <>\ THE DOG 29 

minous evidence was introduced to show that defendant had shot 

the dog in malice, while other evidence went to prove that the dog 
had attacked the defendant. Vest was not disposed to argue the case, 
hut, being urged, he rose, scanned the races of the jury for a moment, 

and said : 

Eulogy on the Dog. 

"Gentlemen of the jury: The best friend a man has in tne 
world may turn against him and become his enemy; his son or 
daughter, reared with loving care, may prove ungrateful ; those 
nearest and dearest, those we trust with our happiness and good 
name, may become traitors to our faith. The money that a man has 
he may lose — it flies away perhaps when he needs it most; a man's 
reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill considered action ; 
those who are prone to fall upon their knees to do us honor when 
success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice 
when failure settles upon us, but the one absolutely unselfish friend 
a man can have in this world — one that never deserts him ; never 
proves ungrateful or treacherous — is his dog. A man's dog stands 
by him in prosperity or poverty, in health or sickness; he will sleep 
on the cold ground where wintry winds blow, and the snow drives 
fiercely, if only he can be near his master's side; he will kiss the 
hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores 
that come in the encounter with the roughness of the world, and 
he guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. 
When all others desert, he remains. When riches take wings 
and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun 
in its journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master 
forth, an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful 
dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to 
guard against danger: to right against enemies. And when the last 
scene of all comes, and death takes his master, and his body is laid 
in the cold ground, there by the grave will the noble dog be found, 
his head between his paws; his eyes sad, but open in watchfulness; 
faithful and true even in death." 

Vest sat down. He had spoken low and without gesture, ana 
made no reference to the merits of the case. When he had finished, 
judge and jury were wiping their eyes. The jury returned a 
verdict for $500. Plaintiff had sued for $200. 

When in Edinburgh, I saw that monument erected by the 
Baroness Burdett-Coutts to the faithful dog who for many years, 
summer and winter, in burning heat, bitter cold, drenching rain and 
driving snow lay on his master's grave, leaving it only for the food 
and drink furnished by the neighboring shopkeepers, then back 
to h's lonely vigil until death ended his pathetic waiting. 



30 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



Wl : *1 



mn 




BP 



& i 






\ ■ 



THE FARM WARDER 







CATTLE YARD 




THE FOUR SEASONS ON THE FARM. 



POULTRY RAISING 31 

Merino Sheep. 

Sheep? Yes, at times quite a Hock, which finally dwindled 
to a trio of pure registered .Merinos brought from Vermont. Two 
of these were found dead one morning in a corn field hack of the 
ham. their throats gashed and Hesh torn, victims of a vicious dog. 

We tried raising Angora goats as a business, and even had 
visions of adding to the county's wealth as well as our own bank 
account by their increase and yearly shearing, but after developing 
a fondness for our choicest shrubbery they too became memories. 
Pigs. 

Idle Green Mountain State furnished us with some chunky 
black Berkshire and white Yorkshire pigs, fat and solid parallelo- 
grams, with knobbed mouths, distended cheeks, and legs so short that 
they appeared almost to crawl, instead of walk. No, there were no 
razor-backs in the hog pens and no ringed pigs. Experience taught 
that if confined within small space they girdled and ruined the trees, 
so we gave them the run of several orchards, threw grain on the 
ground, partially burying it, and our animal plowshares did wonders 
in industriously uprooting sod and soil, resulting in far more produc- 
tive trees. 

The smokehouse, used as a roadway from the sty to the farm 
help table, served also at times as a miniature Libby Prison for one 
small boy in "knickers," whose obstreperous gaiety was thought to need 
occasional curbing. Here also we shut up Spot, the fox terrier, on 
gala nights when fire crackers and fireworks were in the air. Of 
these he had such hatred that he would dash angrily into their midst 
with utter disregard of life and limb. 
Poultry Raising. 

Of chicken farming we took deep draughts, as is usual with 
the amateur in this possibility-filled realm, breeding the wild 
squawking brown, also white, Leghorns — good layers, but poor setters 
or meat-producers; the phlegmatic, good-natured partridge, buff and 
white Cochins, feathered to their toe-nails; the barred and white 
Plymouth Rock, the strutting, tufted Poland ; the silver penciled 
Wyandotte, the artistocratic white, buff and black Orpington, the 
jet black Minorca, the sprightly, trim Rhode Island Reds, the dig- 
nified Houdan, its illustrious descendants, the Faverolles, blue 
blooded Blue Andalusians, staring white faced Spanish, and the tiny, 
demure Bantams, who proved more intelligent than their pompous 
neighbors, notwithstanding the statement that a chicken's education 
ends when a day old. The antics of a clutch of one-day-old 
chicks gave unending diversion, lively in spite of their usual twenty- 
four hour starvation. Small chicken houses on skids used as a 
by-product, brought our best behaved and most aggressive insect 
gourmands to assist in the clean-up slaughter of garden pests in 
asparagus and strawberry beds and small fruit plantings when bloom 



32 HO IV TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE CEIXATJ OF PratlACIX 
ONE HOUSE THAT STROLLED INLAND. 



FORTY POUND TURK/:) 33 

and fruitage were not in evidence. A mulch of weeds and straw 

outside the hennery walls allowed the use of a dirt ash-strewn dusting 
floor in winter. More than a dozen breeds, with separate yard for 
each, battled to convince us that there was money to be made 
from this branch of husbandry, but when the stock of hens num- 
bered much over one hundred and the care devolved upon hired 
help, we found little if any profit. In spite of incubators and 
brooders, sunny and shaded chicken runs, close study of the dietetic 
value of different poultry foods, including a goodly batch of sunflower 
seeds grown in the hen yards, and seemingly the most devoted care, 
both infant and adult mortality ran high, and roup competed with 
hen-hawks, polecats and an occasional Sir Reynard, to fill the wrong 
side of the ledger. The profit in the sale of breeding stock was more 
than canceled by possible loss in egg and broiler.* 

Forty Pound Turkey. 

I recall with bucolic pride our forty pound prize bronze turkey 
gobbler. To be accurate, he tipped the scales at thirty-eight pounds 
eight ounces, but candor compels us to admit that he was "boughten, 
not riz." Our pride had a setback when we read of a sixty-pounder 
in the West. 

In self defense, we had to trap the mink, weasel, rat, and 
sometimes a vagrant cat, who insisted upon joining issues with an 
occasional polecat to poach in the chicken yard. 

Well, the chicken raising hobby serves the beneficent purpose 
of forcing pure country air into half expanded city lungs, and gives 
new zest to living, even if financial results are sometimes disappointing. 

Among all the screechers on our farm, including quacking ducks 
and hissing geese, our guinea fowl and a royal peacock, who strutted 
proudly up and down the lawn, generally refusing to entertain guests 
by an exhibition of his spreading tail with its iridescent coloring, out- 
screeched them all. 

The white fantails superciliously ignored the carrier pigeons that 
dwelt in the dovecote, nesting in the big barn cupola. Perched on 
ridges or strutting in the barn yard, they almost fell backward under 
pride of carriage, and added to the domestic atmosphere of our farm 
buildings. 

Husking Bee. 

The floor of the old barn was too uneven for dancing, but each 
fall we had a jolly husking bee, and the finding of a red ear generally 
prognosticated a reddened cheek. 

The way out for the amateur poultry keeper, whether a widow with children to sup- 
port or a clerk seeking lost health, has been found. Let each municipality or. in lieu of a 
generous public, the liberal minded individual owner, establish poultry experiment stations 
in near-by suburbs, where up-to-date methods in sheltering, feeding, breeding, special care of 
poultry, buying of stock and feed, and marketing poultry and eggs in the most profitable 
manner, are taught. Plants of this character widely established would greatly shorten 
the distance between producer and consumer, and could supply incubator chicks and market 
tin- poultry . 



34 HO W TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Our Honey Bee Industry. 

The boys who, as we shall see later, built "The Cot," had a 
strong liking for bees, snakes, turtles and all animal life. Under 
the tutelage of an apiarist who lived near, a swarm of bees was cap- 
tured from the branch of an apple tree and installed in a novel hive 
made by removing the lower sash in one of the attic windows, 
fitting a neatly-made box tightly in the space, and boring holes in 
the window frame for ingress and egress of the bees. On the room 
side of the box they inset a broad sheet of glass darkened by a 
screen. Utilizing the plan of a friend, a sliding microscope was 
arranged against the glass, so that on lifting the curtain the bees could 
be microscopically seen in their home life. 

No more pathetic insect life exists than that of the female 
bee, born a queen, but changed in a few days, through insufficient 
food, to a worker in a realm of abject servitude. She knows no 
rest, and after weeks of continuous toil there comes a morning, as 
she darts from the hive to her daily task, when the worn out wings 
fail, and she falls to the ground never to rise again. 

One of our queen bees by actual count in twenty-four hours 
laid 2,000 eggs toward her life quota of from one and one-half to 
two and one-half million. The busy bee, Napoleon's emblem, 
led us deep into the mysteries of one phase of interesting insect life, 
and twenty hives in one orchard kept our friends and us honeyed 
all the year. 

The window bee-hive, where there was no risk of being stung, 
was one of the farm sights, and interested all visitors, while the 
incentive given the children to study natural history formed method- 
ical habits of research, close observation and that greatest of all factors 
in success — concentration. 

Star Gazing. 

From bee-keeping and its kindred attractions, they were drawn 
to the study of astronomy, and the five-inch lens telescope set up on 
the old farm-lookout was in constant use. Star gazing in the open 
was supplemented by indoor lessons. 



HMDS 35 



CHAPTER II. 

Our Birds — Fruit — Insects — Farm Help — Boy's Cabin: — Pets 

— Forestry — Game Preserve — Hedges — Roads — Gutters 

— Ice — Play Side of Farming — County Fair — 

Symptoms of Building Mania. 

IT adds new zest to living to be up and about with the meadow 
lark, and is rare joy occasionally, when the days are longest, to 
beat the birds at their game of early rising, and hear from copse and 
tree-top dawn twitters, swelling into orisons of greeting to the King 
of Day. An early to bed regime made possible an occasional summer 
stroll at four a. m., that rare hour of nature's awakening so seldom 
appreciated by the great mass of humanity because unseen. 

Bird Annihilation Spells Famine. 

Though but the merest fraction of the nine hundred or more 
North American bird species nested and lived among us, numerically 
they were legion.* The quantities of cherries, berries, seeds, grubs, 
worms and insects attracted them to our orchards by thousands and 
they were welcomed with open arms as man's best friends. A 
leading scientist, an extremist, has said, "Obliterate the birds, and you 
blot man from this planet within nine years." The "death cham- 
ber" of the bird we seldom found though a rocky cleft or a hole in a 
tree, sometimes serving as an ossuary, at rare intervals gave up the 
secret. Isolation in the death hour seems the choice of all animal 
life. 

The birdling in a single day develops as far toward maturity 
as an infant in a year. This rapid grow T th requires an insect menu 
of wide scope and great quantity. For example, it is on record 
that a pair of house martins (swallows) fed their young over three 
hundred times in sixteen hours. We managed to accom- 
modate the growing birds, and still have so many left-overs that 
additional slaughter of the innocents by fire, poison and force of 
anus alone prevented serious damage to our crops. To walk through 
field and pasture with opera glass, camera, pad and pencil and ever 
so, feebly try to fathom bird lore was keen delight. 

Bob White. 

From "Round Meadow," the only nomenclature of the past that 
clung to the old farm, came the liquid notes of the browm thrasher 



* Authorities claim that the climate of Connecticut not only allows a wider range in 
plant growth than any other state— but that a greater variety of birds lives within its borders. 



36 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




METAMORPHOSING THE FARM. 



RATS OF THE AIR 37 

and the answering call to our mocking whistle of "Bob White," who 
seemed so close at hand, yet was never visible when whistling, but 
I once found a quail's nest at the base of a peach tree, in a thicket 
of raspberry vines within eight feet of the driveway and quite near 
the house. We enclosed it with a half-inch mesh wire fence about 
four feet high, making a circle ten feet in diameter, thinking to 
outwit the mother, and reach one of our goals, which was to own, 
with the State's permission, a domesticated covey of quail, a bird 
that, as it darts to and fro, is as close to perpetual motion as any- 
thing that breathes. An empty nest and cast-off shells proved that 
the mother bird had outwitted us. In bird as in man the house 
building instinct is bred-in-the-bone. One bird bungalow was in 
a deep hole in a cherry tree close to the porch. Here a pair of flute 
voiced English starlings had their home, taking most kindly even 
to our inclement winters, while in that rare seedling pound apple 
tree dwelt the happiest and sprightliest of birds, the robin red breast. 
When the tree died, and was felled, the robins moved to the veranda 
eaves under the goose-neck of the spout-head and set up house- 
keeping, until forced to seek the orchard by that belligerent little 
fellow r , the English sparrow that, like worry, is always with us. 

"Rats of the Air."* 

In 1872 or 1873 a Boston official presented us with one of the 
first pairs of English sparrows brought to this country — a gift, I 
believe, from some English municipality to the city of Boston. Unas- 
suming birds contrasted with their pugnacious English cousins were 
the shy and gentle song sparrows whose three call notes and sweet 
toned conjugal warbles bespoke sunrise in February's warmest days. 

We freed the English sparrows — bud, flower, grain-eating and 
nest-stealing vagrants — on our country place in the Newtons, near 
Boston, inadvertently assisting in starting the sparrow scourge but 
with far less innocence than that East Medford naturalist and 
astronomer, Prof. L. Trouvelot, who, while trying to breed a new 
silk worm, allowed an experimental importation of a do/en or so of 
the gypsy moth to escape in the open. 

Devastating Gypsy Moth. 

Massachusetts has spent millions of dollars in the effort to 
exterminate this moth ami lost other millions in damage to crops, the 
snow-ball of devastation increasing in size as it rolls westward. The 
gypsy moth caterpillar eats voraciously in the late afternoon and at 
night, shunning the sun and attacking everything in sight, including 



-Experiment proved that these bird rats would enter; in their gluttonous search for food, 
some forms of rat traps, and merciless ju^ice dealt to them what they had ruthlessly dealt to 
others. 



38 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 





CHANGING THE^FARK ft? 2 

THREE OP THE CHANGES. 



THE BIRD TROLLEY ROAD 



39 





^> 


V \ 




/ y \. 


rd 


1 jgS 












;p 


■ 


vw 


' J 


0' 

* 


■ ^ 


.>y>j 


*• « ja 



MURDER WILL OUT. 
CAUGHT IN THE ACT OF ENTERING THE BIRD NURSERY. 

coniferous trees, a second or third defoliation generally meaning the 
death of the tree. The foul excrement from a tree full of these 
noxious, disgusting pests sounds like pattering rain drops. 

From the depths of hazel copse came the ubiquitous catbird's 
shrill notes. He called to us at times so naturally under varied aliases 
as to confuse an expert regarding his identity. 

Close to the house was a colony of chattering, scolding wren= 
and a pair of gentle bluebirds, flashes of azure brightness as they 
darted by. Each species lived in bird-houses one of the boys nailed 
to a high pole where the lazy Angora could not depopulate the bird 
nursery, as he did when their home was in a get-at-able crotch of 
the apple tree. 

Puss Saved from Being a Bird Assasin. 

His punishment was to wear the insignia of the Society of Bell 
Ringers, which saved the lives of many of our sweetest songsters. 

The goldfinch, the scarlet tanager, the Baltimore oriole, red 
winged blackbird and the rose-breasted grosbeak changed even a 
sombre landscape to one of tropical beauty. 

The Bird Trolley Road. 

The bird trolley road was unfranchised, and only extended from 
the sewing room window to the shaded depths of the big elm, its 
cargo crumbs, seeds, water and similar express matter. The tree 
terminal was well patronized, but the other end of the route only 
saw the tamest birds. 



40 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



STOIfYCREST 




THAI £IR£N IN THT. APF.'.t ORCHARD 



li?3 



HOW THE UNASSUMING ACRES CHANGED FRONT. 



BIRD TEMPERAMENTS 41 

Farmer's Wasted Opportunity. 

As the birds are God's messengers, so should the farmer be 
the custodian of nature's secrets and above the smirch of saint seducing 
gold. No man has a grander opportunity to appreciate the infinity 
of the Creator than he who rises with the lark. Drudgery and 
grinding care, I grant you, are often his lot, hut snow-bound winter 
days and long winter evenings away from the lure of the town give 
hours for close converse with book and microscope. The jugglery 
and jingle of dollars, especially in the marts of trade, in this money 
grubbing age, at times dwarf, deaden, and almost destroy our love 
of nature. The farther we get from civilization, the closer seems 
man's head to the ground, and in potato patch or hay field he often 
appears unmindful of the uplift that comes through communion with 
that same nature. 

"I laugh at the lore and pride of man, 
At sophist's school, and the learned clan ; 
For what are they all in their high conceit 
When man in the bush with God may meet?" 

In that morning stroll, one of the earliest greeters was the 
bobolink, rising from the meadow and fairly bubbling over with his 
melodious song of joy, a song that stayed with me through distracting 
days. 

More rarely, but at earlier and later hours, and in contradistinc- 
tion to the glorious warble of the bobolink, (the reed bird of the 
south, or Bob-o-Linkon) came nocturnal "Poor Will's" hid for 
sympathy, and along the same line, but at more normal hours, 
the plaintive note of the Phoebe bird and in the twilight hour that 
wonder warble from one of the sweetest choristers of earth's oft 
invisible choir, the thrush, pouring forth its evening song. 

Bird Temperaments. 

We enjoyed studying bird temperaments, and tracing resem- 
blances to the human. In spite of the hackneyed statement that 
in an animal we find but one quality accentuated; e. g.; faithfulness 
in the dog, ambition in the horse, selfishness in the hog, in birddom 
were found varied qualities. For instance, the kingfisher showed 
some distinctive old bachelor traits, fairly reveling in solitude, rarely 
consorting in numbers, methodical in habit ; generally frequent- 
ing the same hunting ground, fishing in the same stream, and perch- 
ing on the same watch tower tree times without number. The rasp- 
ing, strident voiced blue jay is the best example of the jay-human 
who egotistically bores both friend and adjacent stranger in car and 
theatre with meaningless chatter, he who loudly rehearses his unim- 
portant personal doings, gluttonously feeding on half-hearted excla- 
mations forced hv courtesy from ennuied listeners. 



42 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




SOME Of THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO THE UHASSUMrwG ACRES 

EACH PLANNED TO FIT THE SITE. 



BLIZZARD OF 1888 



43 



The crow impressed one with his self-importance, strutting up and 
down our fields like a landed proprietor. Very sociable and interest- 
ing he proved, and when a young one was captured his antics were al- 
most human. He is a type of the exasperating bombastic and self-suf- 
ficient man, the impressionist, life with whom is "caw" and "caw" 
again. He listens with supercilious anil distracted mien, only to 
endeavor to outdo and overshadow with the account of his own or his 
friend's doings, in his anxiety to be heard cutting short the finale 
of your tale. 

But for real bubbling-over cheerfulness, give me the chickadee. 
The snow might drift across the lane level with fence top, and trees 
and buildings be festooned therewith, yet the cheery "here I be" of 
this optimist brightened the most forlorn day. 




BLIZZAR1 1 < IF 1888. 



Blizzard of 1888. Bird Callers. 

I recall that in the blizzard of 1888, when we had to tunnel a 
snowdrift to reach the outer world as well as to feed stock, the 
chickadee was our first caller, forced to tap at a second story window- 
pane for his breakfast. Snow buntings, mi thatches, downy wood- 
peckers, and tree sparrows vigorously hunted for seeds and grubs in 
meadow and orchard and also patronized our suet lunch counter nailed 
to a near by apple tree. Winter seemed to make hopping sparrows 
and waddling starlings thoroughly dissatisfied with themselves and 
their surroundings; I fancy the gray skies grayed their lives, as gray 
skies affect some humans. 



44 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




TOPSY TURVYDta KATVSE- 



THE FARM HOUSE AND ITS NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR. 



KINGLETS OF THE El'ERGREENS 45 

The woodpecker showed the traits of a bustling business man. 
With untiring energy he circled and re-circled the trunks of our 
apple trees, leaving them moth-eaten and battered as he bored with 
almost mathematical precision myriad holes in his search for insect 
life and sap. It is Munchausenly said by some reckless tarradiddler 
that the most beautiful markings glorifying the bird's-eye maple are 
directly traceable to an injury to the tree made by this industrious 
bird, who, if the statement were correct, might be called an arboreal 
pearl manufacturer. The scientist solves the enigma with the state- 
ment that they are wood imprisoned buds. 

The shrill, imperious note of command of the flicker or golden 
woodpecker (next in size to the crow, and a leader among bird 
captains of industry) awakened early spring morning echoes. 

The quarrelsome side of humanity divided honors among 
the birds. Pronounced examples were seen in the frowsy-headed, 
scolding wren, the noisy, pugnacious, bloodthirsty English sparrow 
and the fighting shrike or butcher bird who brained alike both spar- 
rows and field-voles. 

Kinglets of the evergreens were real kings in their province, 
near neighbors to the redstart, another of our sweetest warblers. 
The fitful, darting, uneven, swirling flight of the barn swallows 
graphically pictures the forceful yet purposeless man who takes 
long and roundabout journeys to go little distances in the realm 
of finance and barter, unable to see the shorter cuts. 

The lilliputian, hawk-like, screaming, bow-winged chimney 
swifts were continually in Might, their only alighting spot seeming 
to be the chimney side. At times their progeny disturbed our slum- 
bers with ghostly rlutterings on the hearth at midnight's witching hour. 

In the highest peak of the granary roof nested that awkward 
booby of the bird race, the barn owl, whose strangely weird screech- 
ing of "to whit! to whoo!" so different from all other bird language, 
broke the stillness of the summer nights, preceded often at dusk by 
the sharp eerie shriek of the night hawk, which came out of the ether 
like the cry of a lost soul as he circled aimlessly overhead.* 

Bats. 

Yes, there were plenty in one of our outbuildings; harmless 
creatures, in spite of their swift and startling comings and goings and 
occasionally hair-raising poachings in the tabu realms of porch and 
bedroom, in their search for mosquitoes and moths. 

Pirating Birds. 

Bird thievery was best exemplified in the nest-stealing cuckoo, 
less parasitical, however, than his European cousin, and the love of 
companionship in the polygamous cowbird who perched upon and 
fed near the cattle, and was another nest-appropriating vagrant. 

The night hawk is in the front rank of the list of crepuscular goatsuckers. 



46 



BOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 











HIIXCK£ST FARM 



•STONY CREST 



STORM KDIC-! 




ma 

TOP 



TIES TOVJR-R & THAT H AFPEHBI) TO THE tATRM QpR£ !?£.- * - 

FIFTEEN SHEAVES FROM THE GRAIN FIELDS. 



BATTLE ROYAL IN THE ORCHARD 47 

The cuckoo synonymed perfectly among his fellows of the avian 
tribe that type of man who, no matter how many or how close his 
relatives, seems always a stranger among them, sharing not an 
attribute of his forbears, furnishing to some additional proof of the 
theory of reincarnation. 

The Songless Bird. 

Interesting and fascinating because of its delicate tiny form 
and swift motion was the songless bird, the ruby-gorget-throated 
hummer, whose spitfire squeak oft betrayed his presence. He quaffed 
deep draughts of the honey hidden in the floret's deepest nectary, fit for 
a king, his favorite browsing field the Japanese Halliana honeysuckle 
that covered our side porch with its profuse continuous blooms and 
green-embowered the entrance to the dining room used by the stable 
help. The red-eyed vireo and the siskin haunted the orchard. 

The red-headed sapsucker, who unwittingly shares his sap 
banquet with bee and humming bird, and the hermit thrush, were 
among our latest bird callers ere they took up their journey south- 
ward. As in mankind big crowds often mean jolly companionship, 
so enormous flocks of birds bubble over with the joy of living as they 
seek the air lanes through which they migrate at high altitudes for 
thousands of miles twice a year, instinct directing their course with 
unerring precision. 

I soon learned that the singing birds of May and June, the 
real chorister months in birddom, were absolutely silent during 
the moulting season of July and August, though the robin and some 
others were again in voice ere wintry blasts drove them either into 
the deep woods or farther south. Birds, to whom is given the freedom 
of the skies, have but faint kinship with the beasts, apparently belong- 
ing to other realms, and man's efforts to fathom bird lore have igno- 
miniously failed — -indeed, seemingly few try to understand the fasci- 
nating chorister pages in nature's book. 

Battle Royal in the Orchard. 

Believing firmly in a generous fruit diet as a bulwark against 
disease, our plantings, in addition to the back log of apples and pears, 
were large and varied. The old saw: "Two apples a day keep the 
doctor away" was in our unwritten decalog. 

Man\- were the discussions over the different fruits; whether 
one could tell by taste the red Cuthbert from the golden queen or the 
Brinkles orange raspberry; the best eating and keeping pears and 
apples, or pick out a seckle and a Bartlett pear tree when the orchard 
was leafless. Dwarf fruit trees, the playthings of the orchard, were 
soon uprooted and given to owners of town yards while we used 
sturdier, more prolific, and profitable plantings. 



-48 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




HAYING. 



SEEDLING POUND APPLE 49 

Apples. 

Success? That depends upon the point of view. At any rate, 
we had the keen joy of living close to nature, and were all in perfect 
health. The profit in dollars varied. One year I recollect we 
had over four hundred barrels of apples, but that year everyone 
had apples in profusion. There was only sufficient cash return to 
pay the commission merchant's charges, the freight, cost of barrels, 
and a few cents for the pickers. 

Worthless fruit abounded, as in most old farm orchards, but 
grafting and regrafting, coeval with our conquest of the San Jose 
scale, gave far better results. 

Some of the thriftiest wild apple seedlings and occasionally the 
least desirable of nursery-grown trees were grafted with seek-no- 
furthers, northern spys, Baldwins and Roxbury russets, Rhode Island 
greenings, wine sap, king, and snow apples, and Newtown pippins. 

False Economy in Tree Planting. 

The trees had been planted for from twenty-five to fifty years and 
were a monument to the false economy of the farmer who, having 
broad acres, yet crowds his apple trees to twenty-five foot spaces, and in 
less than a score of years has a mass of interlocked branches, conse- 
quently undersized and mildewed fruit. With this lesson before us, 
all new settings were spaced from fifty to sixty feet, and trees 
planted opposite only in every other row, giving still more room for 
growth. 

Dynamiting the Soil. 

Before planting the orchards, every twenty-five feet and 
three feet underground were set dynamite cartridges. Electrically 
exploded as one battery, they thoroughly disintegrated the soil and 
freed plant food enslaved for centuries. In winter the trees were 
girdled with newspapers to balk the girdling rabbit. 

Many a farmer is ignorant of the fact vouched for by some 
authorities that the cedar is the enemy of the apple tree, and that the 
crisp, tiny, brown, fragile, hollow cedar apple can propagate an apple 
blight; therefore he who hedges in his fruit trees by wind screens 
of protecting cedars harbors that which may blight and curtail his 
apple crop. 

We scraped the rough, loose, scaly bark from the trunks of 
fruit trees, being careful not to dig into the quick, and gave them 
thorough scrubbings with greasy water, including dog washing suds. 
This disheartened and generally annihilated the most voracious bug, 
and helped to grow a fine, smooth, healthy bark. 

Seedling Pound Apple. 

New apple trees were set out for variety. The former owner's 
plantings had been russets, Baldwins, one sweet apple, half a 



50 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




SHACKS THAT 6D6B THE. APPROACH "BREWSWCK ma WHtH «** in amwicA was voima 

FROM SHACK TO MANSION. 



PEAR TREE OF 1632 51 

dozen northern spys and three crab apple. In the front yard, close to 
the house, was a seedling apple tree at least twenty-five years old that 
deserves an epitaph, especially as by encroaching on its roots in enlarg- 
ing the farm house we unintentionally killed it. For several seasons it 
bore bountifully apples weighing a pound or more each. They had 
bright reddish skins streaked with green, were deliciously tart, and fine 
keepers. The rare combination keenly interested and completely phased 
every pomologist to whom I submitted specimens, including my old 
friend Dr. Hexamer who credited me with owning the apple of the 
future, and I had just completed arrangements for its propagation in 
a large way when it died. A second Concord grape success was lost 
to the world when that nameless seedling pound apple tree died 
unscioned, and failure number ten, a most humiliating one, went into 
the record book. 

Pear Tree of 1632. 

We sent a special agent to the Governor Thomas Prence 
homestead at Eastham, on Cape Cod (the Thomas Prence who came 
over in the good ship Fortune, and was later one of the early Gov- 
ernors of Plymouth Colony) and obtained scions of that oldest 
pear tree in the United States, as on three former occasions. 
Affidavits from "that oldest inhabitant" assured us that they were 
taken from the tree brought from England in or about 1632. They 
grew and thrived, and though the fruit was small and gnarly, the 
charm of history and romance surrounded it, for undoubtedly from the 
same stock ate John Alden and Prlscilla Mullens, that doughty war- 
rior, Myles Standish, and many others of the little company who paid 
that first memorable visit to New England, December 22, 1620. We 
christened this pear the Mayflower, as eating it carried us back to the 
days of cone-shaped hats, wide collars and knickerbockers; to the time 
when little things were mighty things, in sharp contrast with these 
latter days when mighty things are to us little things. Newly 
awakened forces advance, vanguarded by electricity and radium, 
unknown, sleeping giants then, but today though barely awakened 
more than equal to the enormous burdens that man in the arrogance 
of his divine right to rule matter is heaping upon them. 

The Site Makes or Ruins. 

The same farmer who plants his apple trees close together often 
opens both house and barn gates across the highway and builds his 
home unpleasantly near it, barns and outbuildings sometimes really 
edging the dusty road, all false economies, forgetting that if the house 
is set well back and on rising ground, if only in a rough pasture lot, his 
property is lifted beyond ordinary farm competition, and can be made 
extremely attractive and more valuable at small expense. I have in 
mind two ordinary houses that I moved back from the highway a 
couple of hundred feet into the centre of a rugged hillside at a cost 



52 HO IV TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



i 1 r J»* 




1 




Linton 






ANIMATES AND INANIMATES. 



CORDON AND FAN-GROWN TREES 53 

of $300 each, and thereby increased the value of land and buildings 
one hundred per cent. Even the widening of a road in front of a prop- 
erty enhances its value and desirability. As simple a thing as setting 
back a wall two feet I found not only broadened the sidewalk hut 
added materially to the appearance and value of a house. 

The vital and expensive error of building a house in the wrong 
location is frequently made. A house built o.i low land is generally 
sheltered, often hot, and always damp. 

Fruit Crop. 

The fruit crop on the old farm began and ended with apples, 
save for a couple of crooked pear trees which yielded a half crop of 
discolored, nuhbined, gnarly fruit; half a dozen fine peach trees — 
never have eaten as good peaches since — and a small patch of rasp- 
berries. 

Peaches. 

The peach crop from the new plantings averaged for several years 
about fifteen hundred baskets of highly colored luscious fruit. 

A long, tight board fence facing south inveigled us to distort and 
mutilate with knife and pruning-saw peach, nectarine, and pear tree 
along espalier lines, and cordon and fan-grown trees fastened against 
this fence matured their fruit ahead of time, boosted into ripening by 
old 3x6 hot-bed sash, braced lengthwise aslant the fence top. 

The short-lived peach trees were set between the long-lived 
pears, which outlive their planters for generations unless neglected 
or overtaken by disease; indeed, even the stalwart apple tree crumbles 
to dust years before this seemingly weaker sister, the pear, ceases 
to yield. Our pear gamut extended from Clapp's Favorite, that rotted 
at the heart if left on the tree, to the late ripening Kieffer, and 
between times the Buerres, including the luscious Bosc, also the winter 
Nelis, sell nt a high price. In apples we prolonged the season from 
Summer Red Astrachans to wine saps and Winter Spitzenhergs. 

Plums. 

Plum trees were planted in the poultry yard to gain the aid of 
the industrious hen in the struggle with that mightiest of monopolistic 
trusts, the insect world. We fought at five a. m. or earlier the 
curculio, nicknamed the little Turk, because in depositing her egg- 
she stamps her mark of ownership, a Turkish crescent, on every plum 
within reach. A sheet was spread each side the trunks, and often 
before sun-up, while the night chill is still in the air so that she could 
neither cling to the tree nor fly away, we tapped with mallet on a 
screw or spike driven into the tree trunk, and, lo, Mrs. Curculio 
was soon food for an extraordinarily hungry hen or the fire. Infec- 
tive monilia and shot-hole fungi were fought valiantly with poison- 
charged squirt guns. Quinces thrived when we checked the bombard- 
ment of quince curculio, borer, and bag-worm. 



54 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

6HAP SHOTS OF LIFE- OH TH£ FARM 

1 




OWe SECTION /OUR fWO-MtCt fWRAL BORDER 



FARM VIEWS 



SMALL FRUITS 55 

The farmer finds no exception to that law confronting mankind, 
the survival of the fittest, briers vs. Mowers, tares vs. grain, insects 
and fungi vs. vegetables and fruit. Much to our surprise we found 
that the long yellow papaw and plum-like astringent persimmon 
thrived. 

Cherries. 

Cherry Lane which led to the pastures was lined each side with 
black eagles, black Tartarians, Governor Woods and yellow Spanish. 

Wild cherry trees were left in the hedge-rows (unless they 
shaded other planting) as a spread net to segregate the tent cater- 
pillars for our kerosene torches of destruction. We ashed for 
vellows, tried successfully the alliteration "potash paints the peach," 
cut the blighted branches of the pear trees and sprayed Bordeaux 
mixture and other solutions from a horse-barrel-cart and pump to 
the very topmost twigs of our fruit trees to destroy fruit and 
leaf blights- 
Grapes. 

Grape settings numbered hundreds, possibly thousands, of 
varied kinds, and judicious winter pruning before the sap started 
gave a prolific yield of Niagaras and Concords which with us rarely 
mildewed, although the former under conditions is a mildewer, but 
the Rogers seedlings in our climate were far from immune. Roses 
no longer satisfied the rose bug. The grapevine was to his special lik- 
ing, and his inroads, as well as that of black rot, the active grape-leaf- 
hopper and the spotted pelidnot kept us destructively busy among the 
vines. Paper bags protected, and thinning grapes in cluster and bunch 
vastly improved the fruit. 

Rough, grape-vine-embowered and crude-angled cedar, walnut, 
and chestnut pergolas lasted longer than those planed and painted, 
curved and jig-sawed, arched arbors made and set by the carpenter, 
and were far more appropriate and picturesque. The first cost was 
less and the repair bill nil. They made fine dog-trots, while the grassy 
space between centred with a bird font answered for a crow-walk and 
bird rendezvous. 

Small Fruits. 

After investigation, the Wachusett was decided upon as the semi- 
thornless blackberry best suited to our needs. Some gooseberries 
were large as damson plums; the red, white, and black currants grew 
fairly well in the shade, and made rare preserves, but the wild bar- 
berry, when in flower or fruit a most ornamental shrub, gave the 
best jam. There were dewberries, or running blackberries, whortle- 
berries and strawberries of varying degrees of sweetness, but few 
of the latter as good flavor as the wild strawberry, also a wealth of 

-Copper sulphate, six pounds, lime, four pounds, to thirty five or forty gallons of water 
was the formula. 



56 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

ROBINS NEST a kborStum *-* q b jlkhykrp 




HILL TOP 

ROBIN'S NEST ON THE MOWING KNIVES. 



DEFEAT BY THE INSECT TRUST 57 

elderberries, red, yellow and black raspberries, or black caps, and bay- 
berries, from which we make the Christmas "bayberrie dyppe." Our 
only bog was planted to cranberries from stock sent us from Cape 

Cod. 

Tie and Pole Forestry. 

We found the care and propagation of trees as outlined by the 
United States Government interesting, and the farm library was 
added to by forestry papers and booklets as well as Governmental 
maps showing the topography and boundaries of our State and 
country. As a business project, in view r of the dearth and high 
price of the wood of black walnut and cherry, we planted hundreds 
of small trees of each in the pasture land, roughly railing them from 
cattle. Someone, sometime, should reap bountifully where we sowed. 

An acquaintance owning an extensive estate edging one of 
our railroad lines has set out twenty thousand or more locusts and 
chestnuts close to the track, a pole and tie proposition, but unless 
disease in the chestnut is conquered, that end of the project is 
wrecked, though the locust must in time yield good returns, for who 
or what could injure a locust? 

Ornamental trees on the farm were few compared with the five 
hundred and more species indigenous to this country and included 
chestnut, hickory, sassafras, tulip, swamp oak, maple, aromatic black 
birch and sycamore. In shrubs there were half a dozen lilacs and a 
couple of spireas, one of which had a magnificent golden leaf in early 
spring, but lost its coloring later in the season, as do the ordinary 
copper beeches. 

Defeat by the Insect Trust. 

In the six acre blackberry patch was lost a mighty battle. We 
controlled at first the spring and fall orange rust that in a year 
or tw 7 o made heavy inroads on this crop, while the peach 
and quince borers found death at the end of a wire which, spite of 
soiled clothing and bruised knees, was pressed into his hiding places, 
usually found where the trunk edged the ground or an inch or two 
below the surface. By like method was searched out and destroyed 
the apple borer in his bark-hidden lair. 

The asparagus beetle, the raspberry borer, and cane girdler, the 
potato bug — in fact, all the various enemies of the farmer that flew, 
crawled, or bored — we fought tooth and nail with Paris green, helle- 
bore, Bordeaux mixture, and other insect and fungi destroyers. 

Purification by Fire. 

Purification by fire saved foliage, bloom, fruit, and plant, whether 
it was currant worm> rose bug, or infected wood of pear or peach or 
vine of raspberry, blackberry, and grape that fed the holocaust 
and when our twenty years of apprenticeship at farming ended 



58 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

we knew in a fairly satisfactory if amateurish way fruit, milk, 
trees, flowers, farm stock and utensils, in fact, almost everything per- 
taining to farming, except how to manage that unknown and exasper- 
ating quantity, farm help. 

Farm Help. 

Why farm help or the keeping of it proves a bugbear is a 
question that will not down even with the up-from-the-cradle-farmer 
and the amateur is generally nonplussed. 

Birthright Sold for Pottage of the Fields. 

The death-dealing triumvirate of drouth, disease and insect 
life can be circumvented and controlled if not entirely vanquished, 
but the farm help problem is rarely satisfactorily solved. If you let 
the farm on shares to avoid the cares of husbandry, you'll pocket 
your pride and be merely a tenant on your own domain, possibly 
dictatorially told which fields you may enter and those in which you 
must not trespass; have the privilege of paying for new machinery 

. and helplessly seeing it broken up, and when the three years' lease 
has expired, seven to ten chances your soil has been impoverished, 
your cattle made non-producing, and tools and buildings left in poor 
condition. No ! Be a prince, living in your own castle on your own 
estate if it's only a bungalow and two acres, rather than a vassal on a 
thousand acres. But if you own a large farm, pasture most of it, 

. and in part with horse boarders as long as horse boarders exist. Let 
the trees grow, trimming when necessary, keeping down grass, weeds 
and underbrush with a flock of sheep or Angora goats. Farm lightly ; 
take annoyances philosophically, and enjoy Arcadia to the utmost. A 
farm run in this way without expensive buildings to keep up, with 

Targe road frontage, and near a growing town, rapidly increases in 
value, and the carrying charges are simply nominal and more than 
offset by your summer rent. 

Marauder Versus Marauder. 

As in California especially they are using insect to fight insect and 
stamping out disease by letting loose some bitter enemy to feed upon 
it, so in time the microbiologist will discover the insect or fungus that 
will overcome the chestnut disease, as well as the hickory blight which 
is slowly sapping the life of another of our prolific nut trees and 
- destroy the gypsy moth, elm beetle and other enemies to vegetation 
that swarm in mighty hosts in field, orchard and forest. 

Scattered over the farm were nut trees by the hundred, monarched 
notably by a big five-trunked chestnut that we christened "The 
Emperor," after which was named the chestnut lot. 

There were hickories, pig nuts and shellbarks, butternuts, pungent 

black walnuts, and copses of hazel or filberts. To this list was added 

-the little chinquepin, also the large Japanese chestnut that, low- 



CATCH-ALL SHED 59 

growing and thick headed, makes an effective screen, and has at 
present no fungus enemy. The alder-leafed trailing chestnut was also 
successfully grown. 

Hardy English Walnut. 

A farmer sold us half a dozen walnut trees that he had raised 
from the nut of a hardy English walnut, and these gave after fifteen 
years' slow growth that rare product in our climate, a thin-shelled 
walnut of large size. 

Rabbit Hutches and Squirrel Cages. 

In a corner of the harnyard were the rabbit hutches against the 
fence barrier, with underground corridors boxed in wood, covered 
with galvanized wire netting to prevent their digging out. Near 
the wire squirrel-house containing half a dozen tame flying squirrels, 
and built large enough to give them ample freedom, was a small pool 
made by the overflow of a cattle watering trough, which, by the 
way, was a slightly damaged solid porcelain bathtub with square ends, 
priced at $500 but bought for $20. It weighed eight hundred pounds, 
and made an ideal year round trough for the cattle, its white interior 
showing the slightest befoulment and easily hosed. A fir tank fastened 
together with iron rods cost nearly as much, soon began to leak under 
the July sun and in a few years completely rotted, and a brick cement 
lined affair never looked as spotless as our bathtub trough. 

A portion of this little pool in the barnyard, protected from 
cattle intrusion by a w T ire fence, was generally alive with turtles, 
the largest of which were tethered. They were taken from the 
duck ponds, from the big snapper, with his horny, shingled hide, 
guilty of many a duckling or gosling murder, to the daintily painted 
little black and yellow spotted lady-bird-crawler no larger than a half 
dollar. I recall one old moss-back snapper on whose shell was 
scratched the date 1849, proof by inference not only of turtle longevity 
but that someone hunted turtles on or near our farm sixty or more 
years ago. 

Catch-Ail Shed. 

We built what was labeled a catch-all shed, with a driveway 
through its centre to accommodate cumbersome implements. In this 
way ploughs, harrows, ponderous scrapers, etc., could be tumbled off 
the stone boat or sled and dragged out of sight. Here were stored 
several more or less useless experiments; for example, the iron stump 
grubber for uprooting grass tufts that dotted the lowlands, and 
that proved a failure, even when drawn by a double yoke of cattle, 
who were unable to budge the tiny rootlets, so that final resort was 
had to Patrick and a spade. It wasn't a total loss as it made a fine 
subsoil upheaver. 



60 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



THE COT 




ADDmG TO THEIR DOMICILE 



POLISHING '!- GROUHDS 








JVT HOME 



THE LUSTY YOUNG HOMESTAKKRS. 



TODDLERS' HARDEN 61 

An emergency corner was denoted to chains, rope ends, straps, 
old harness, ox yokes, etc., while duplicate tools and odds and ends 
decorated wall and collar beams. On the latter were stored extra 
shafts — a grand-dad curved hack and dashboard, carpet-lined sleigh, 
and other hundred and ones. 

Circumventing the Sagging Gate. 

The problem of the sagging gate fastening was solved with a 
\ ermont farmer's device. To a heavy three-inch jagged edge pronged 
staple with five-inch opening made of three-quarter inch iron ( two 
and a half inches above its centre round and two and a half inches 
below the centre square) was sprung a piece of half-inch flat iron 
about five inches long with square aperture. The round portion 
of the iron staple being of smaller diameter than the square, the 
Mat piece turned easily, but when slipped down on the square fitted 
tightly and held the Hat five-inch fender against the gate, securely 
fastening it. 

The Boy's Cabin. 

7 he shack built by the younger boy was on the same ridge and 
had the same extensive outlook as the farm house. The boy builder 
named it "The Cot," in honor of his grandsire's roof-tree at Fresh 
Water Cove in Gloucester, Massachusetts, built before that "war 
that tried men's souls." 

Two berths, a kitchen, a rear porch, a front veranda, and a 
doorway just low enough to hit a grown-up's head, were what the cot 
inventoried. The lusty young homestaker who built it, from sup- 
porting posts to Boston-shingled-ridge, even if he lives man's allotted 
years, will never again experience such joy as he had in that first 
house warming, nor feel greater pride than when he surveyed his 
first wash. Years after, a heedless farm hand let a brush fire get 
beyond control, and The Cot, as well as the barns which once 
sheltered our prize Dutch belted Taurus and the rest of his kind, 
who stood in commendable alphabetical order from Arabella to Zoe, 
went up in smoke, a calamity that covered an entire page in our 
farm record book. It was the only brush fire ever started in my 
absence and insurance had lapsed the week before. 

Toddlers' Garden. 

The Toddlers' Garden meant absolute safety, entertainment, and 
health to the two to four year old toddlers. It was forty feet square, 
fenced and gated with close meshed wire, and screened with a three 
foot high privet hedge; in one corner a roof and four posts, in the 
centre a sand pile, a bit of greensward, and a few sturdy, flowering 
plants. Close to the house and in plain view of a dozen or more 
windows, it gave the tots the freedom craved and the contact with 
Mother Earth needed, and completely solved one of the most aggra- 
vating problems in the bringing up of the child. 



62 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



Wayside. 

A brush fire razed "Wayside," that quaint little shack with 
attic-stored heirlooms, from the great four-poster, and its convenient 
companion, the trundle-bed, to the Washington table. It also served 
once as the dog on which we tried the patent wooden-board-lath, 
advertised to take the place of the usual mason's lath. One of its 
weak points was that unless the knots were shellacked they showed 
through the plaster and stained the walls much more readily than 
the ordinary lath. It also had less clinching strength. The 
south veranda was covered in four months by that wonderful climber, 
the Kudzu vine, which lengthened forty feet the first season, and on 
its north side, where the winter sun could not burn it, the English ivy 
lived through the coldest winters. Pinned down with pegs this same 
ivy greened deeply shadowed banks and tree-dripped spaces. 

Our Mushroom Venture. 

The basement half-above-ground-cellar of Wayside was double- 
doored and double-windowed, and shelved and binned for storage of 
vegetables. Here too were kept the tub-plants, among them the 
beautiful, purple-blooming, tropical-leaved hydrangeas that lined the 
drive in summer, the bay trees that cornered the house, the brilliant 
scarlet Hibiscus cooperii, and an oleander twelve feet high, a legacy 
from one of our forbears. A half dozen fig trees also found a hiber- 
nating home in that elastic vegetable cellar, and one corner was 
partitioned off for the growing of mushrooms in a modest way which 
required the use of a small heater. The inevitable and essential 
clutter corner held its usual modicum of unsightly but useful articles. 




THE RACK LANE. 



A CIDERLESS FARM 63 

In Wayside was the office, where I conferred with farm help 
and kept dairy and expense books. The veranda afterward added 
proved a wise expenditure and was well patronized. 

Housing Farm Help. 

The lounging and sleeping quarters of the help were also in • 
Wayside, and here they had their meals when the force was large, 
a man cook being employed. 

An ante-room was turned into a semi-sitting room. In it were 
a fireplace, lounge and easy chairs, a large table, well covered with 
agricultural and other papers, and hanging shelves filled with a small 
but instructive farm library. 

Farm Scrap Book. 

There were scrap-books regularly indexed, each devoted to a dif- 
ferent topic — animals, crops, utensils, farm economies, and the like, — 
for which some of the help were interested in collecting items. On 
the walls hung pictures of animals, prize vegetables, etc. 

Above this sitting-room were bedrooms, reached both from with- 
out and within. 

A Ciderless Farm. 

An orgy caused by the use of hard cider decided me to "mother" 
the cider into vinegar, sell the cider-press, and thereafter feed the 
surplus apples to the pigs or give them away with the understanding 
that they were not to be used for cider. Vinegar making, before the 
German twenty-four hour process was discovered, we found a long 
story. After the half filled barrels were given a bit of "mother" 
(which it took two years to mature) it was another year before vine- 
gar spelled cash. 

Wayside annex contained a thoroughly warmed tool shop 
fitted with carpenter's bench, anvil, forge, lathe, etc., and sometimes 
after an absence of months borrowed tools came back because they 
were Indelibly marked "Hillcrest Farm" on metal and wood. Oil 
kept them from rusting when not in use. 

The Tree House. 

Close by Wayside grew the tall chestnut in whose spreading 
top for a dozen years, straddling its highest crotch and defying the 
wildest storms, clung the tree house of the same youngster who 
planned and built The Cot. 

The Back Lane. 

Yes, one edged our farm. It had an individuality of its own. 
For years the neighbors had called it "Break Neck," "Sheep," 
or "Hog Hill," the usual names for a back country hill. Nar- 
rower than the highway, the tree tops sometimes came together 
and skill was needed by the passer-by to avoid cat-briers and 
blackberry vines that hedged it. Here the real freedom of 



64 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

OME°» HILLCBE'SX TERMS BQUWDfiRIES 



FALLS THAT REALLY ' 1 
FALL AMD BOIL AMD 
.SURGE AS THET LEAP j 
OtrWARD TCMAFD THE- ! 
SEA 




FIVE VIEWPOINTS ON THE FARM. 



GOD'S FIRST TEMPLES 



65 



country life had fullest sway. In early spring its borders were 
yellowed by the spice bush, and in the fall the bloom of the yellow 
witch hazel brightened and the stag-horned sumach reddened each 
rocky weed-grown hillock. Occasionally some city friend of pro- 
nounced sylvan tastes camped out in one of the three or four shacks 
that bespoke man's effort to people the wilderness of thorn, thicket, 
and wild frost grape that in wanton growth crowded the narrow way. 
Another world was the back lane and a stroll through it part of 
our Sunday program both summer and winter. 

God's First Temples. 

On a rising knoll centreing our biggest hillside grew a double 
score of majestic swaying pines instancing again and again that "the 
groves were God's first temples." 




OUR [CE FIELD OUT OF COMMISSION. 

Our Woodland Paradise. 

It's but two miles 'cross country to the wood lot, for what farm 
is worthy the name without such a lot? Its approach is through 
a rutty, scratch-gravel, rocky, brier-grown wood or ox-road, a right 
of way across a farmer's cow-yard and someone's pasture. But 
the wood lot stands for a blazing fire of birch, chestnut, hickory and 
maple, while its fauna was a continual surprise. It was a woodland 
paradise for partridges, woodcocks, gray squirrels, and rabbits galore. 
Its glades never echoed to a rifle shot, nor was the steel trap and 
wire or horse hair snare of the farmer boy ever allowed within its 
forty acres surrounded by a poacher-proof, ten foot high, gal- 
vanized wire fence, of close weave at the bottom and arched outward 
at the top. 



66 



HOJV TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE HUMBLE- SERVITORS 



DETAILS OF HUSBANDRY. 



1.1RM BARRIERS 



67 



Deer and Trout. 

The workmen who built the fence enclosed, quite by accident, 
a pair of beautiful deer. Safe from the hunter, the}' enjoyed the 
freedom of the woodland, and were one of the show sights of the 
farm. Its trout stream in season always insured a string of non- 
liver-fed fish. A walk 'cross country to our wood lot was a favorite 
jaunt. 

Farm Barriers. 

Neither stone wall nor wooden fence circumscribed house yard 
or lawn ; when necessary, barriers were formed by hedges, using the 
California privet as our standby, though there were others also through 
the length and breadth of the two hundred and fifty acres, among them 
a glossy-leaved laurel-willow, whose rampant growth was made com- 
pact by severe pruning, also spruces and hemlocks, whose branches, 
thus compelled to sweep groundward in graceful curves, formed a 
close mass of green foliage all the year. A row- of purple beeches kept 
well within bounds and rounded into shape w T as as beautiful as rare, 
but like the oak they are dead-leaf trees. The thorn-branched honey 
locust in one field and the osage orange in another, pruned as hedges, 
prevented our sheep from straying, and a woven wire fence hidden 
in the foliage kept out marauding dogs. We used both hemlock 
and spruce, in preference to Arbor Vita?. In a corner of the garden 
was a sweet brier hedge which perfumed the air for fully one hundred 
feet, also a glorious Rosa rugosa barrier, and near the latter a clump 
of fine-fibred Japanese privet pruned into examples of topiary art. 





THE SUMMER STREAM— AUSABLE CHASM, JR. 



68 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE WINTER TORRENT. 




FALLEN GRANDEUR. 



NO GULLIED, WEED-FILLED ROADS 69 

All hedges wore- planted in double or triple rows to make com- 
pact growth and allow of artistic pruning. Many shrubs were 
readily propagated by thrusting the prunings into the ground in the 

shade of the shrub itself, and transplanting in the open the following 
season. 

Several beautiful effects in privet hedge we obtained by the use 
of the ogee curve on a down grade corner, in this case planting the 
tri-color. A very docile hedge is the privet, America's general substitute 
for the English yew. It was forced to assume many more or less 
attractive, and, in some cases, grotesque shapes in an effort to get 
out of a rut, a characteristic which often led to unnecessary and 
possibly unwise but interesting expenditures. The sloping top of 
one hedge was pruned to spell Hillcrest.* 

Privet edged one side of a set of entrance steps and was trimmed 
to match each step outline, it also solved an oft-met horticultural prob- 
lem by its thrifty growth under shade. Another credit for privet 
was gained during the past winter by the delicately-fibred Japanese 
variety that stood with impunity an occasional bath of salt spray. 

Barbarity of the Wire Barb. 

In early farming days we ignorantly used cruel barbed wire 
fences, but a wounded colt convinced us there was a better way, 
and thereafter squared and knotted galvanized wire barriers w T ere 
substituted ; these were graduated upward from a four-inch to a ten- 
inch mesh and scantling nailed atop the posts, making the fence 
plainly visible to the galloping colts. When using trees as posts for 
fencing the wire was stapled to wooden blocks nailed to the trunk. 
As it grew, the wood moved outward, and trees were uninjured. 

Climber and trailer, as exampled in woodbine, honeysuckle, ram- 
bler rose, and the wistaria, one of our earliest and latest bloomers, 
beautified the ugliest wire fences. The more delicate climbers of 
sparse foliage when trained on sun-exposed wires sometimes shriveled 
and died. 

Roads and gutters were important factors in our effort toward 
Arcadian living, and to them were given much time and thought. 
Weeds growing in cobble-stone gutters along the highway were a 
problem, but a dose of kerosene oil from a watering-pot eliminated 
the tedious work of pulling. One application was generally as effi- 
cacious as the kill-weed liquors. 

Splitting Raindrops. 

Stone gutters on farm roads were dispensed with by dumping 
and spreading on the centre of all steep inclines trap rock, mixed 
chip and pigeon-egg sizes. In this way the falling raindrops scattered, 

*By close to the ground pruning we successfully transplanted a fifty-year-old privet 
hedge some thirty-five years ago and it is today a compact thrifty wall of verdure over eighty 
years old. 



70 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




HHXCRfcST TARK GUMPSts o/srorriCRtsTl 

SWIRLING RAPIDS OP OUR RIVER FRONT 



A FOREST CATHEDRAL 71 

so that even in a fairly heavy shower we had no washed roadways, 
for the rain trickled between the small stones, leaving roads and 
gutters practically uninjured. 

Our River. 

The river that bordered the farm and the brook that centred 
it both had attractions. Damming, controlled by a suitable spill- 
way, made possible both fishing and canoeing on a small scale, the 
pond obtained being about six hundred feet long and one hundred 
and fifty feet wide. From it we filled the ice house, built to include 
a storage room with sawdust-packed walls for keeping fruits, vege- 
tables and sides of meat. As I recollect, the cost of stocking it was 
about $3.00 per ton, convenience being its largest asset. Shrubbery 
and vines screened it from the sun. 

Where the river dashed through a deep ravine, we hung a gallery 
from the cliffside, supported by iron pipes sealed with melted sulphur 
poured into holes which our man-of-all-work drilled in the rock face 
of the cliff, as shown in the summer and winter photographs. This 
gallery was floored with two-inch fir planks laid with half-inch 
spaces to retard too ready decay. 

Suspension Bridge. 

The rapid stream was spanned with a suspension bridge, the 
supporting side chains of which were inset in the ledges, and for a 
quarter of a mile along the rugged shore a footpath skirted 
the foaming rapids. On the east side a high rocky cliff towered 
almost perpendicularly for one hundred feet, its face broken by pro- 
jecting crags and huge boulders, while at the foot grew tall evergreens. 

A Forest Cathedral. 

This picturesque path led into an amphitheatre or forest 
cathedral of lofty hemlocks. A friend built a concrete ford edged 
with cement stepping stones across this same river which for heavy 
trucking was preferable, less expensive and more durable than a 
bridge. 

Not far from our Ausable Jr. was the farm brook which gave an 
eagerly improved opportunity for a trio of small duck ponds at 
descending levels, where one of the boys rigged up a miniature water- 
wheel. In one pond rose a wee bit of an island on which was a duck 
house. These shallows provided safe recreation for the young folks the 
year around. The gold fish with which we attempted to stock it 
were foully murdered in a single night. The criminals? They may 
have been that 1849 snapping turtle, our water fowl, or piratical 
members of the finny tribe — at all events, gold fish were never again 
placed in pools fed by unweired running streams or left without care. 



72 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




HITS OP THE TWO-MILE FLORAL BORDER 



ALFALFA ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE 73 

The Tornado. 

In our twenty years of farming I recall two terrific tornadoes 
which uprooted and even snapped asunder many mighty monarchs 
of the forest. It took months of hard labor to clear woodland and 
hillside pastures after a five-minute gust of one of these devastating 
storms. It is singular that among thousands of uprooted trees I 
have seen in this and other storms, not one struck a house, though 
often they fall when close to a dwelling. 

The Play Side of Farming. 

Hut it was by no means all work in Farmarcadia, as shown 
in snap-shots taken by the boys, which include toboggan slide, pond, 
snow-houses and snow men, play-houses, sports, and pets of all kinds. 
In the meanwhile the arboretum grew apace, from a few struggling 
shrubs to a two-mile flowered border. In this the old farm begins 
to lose its identity, slowly merging into The Hillcrest Manor Park 
of today, an evolution that required over half a score of years for its 
accomplishment. 

Farmers' Grange. 

In closing the chapter in my life wherein I really farmed, I 
would fain pay my respects to the Farmers' Grange. Deeply inter- 
esting were these dueling grounds where green striplings, with the 
courage born of inexperience and ignorance, but often with cabal- 
headed persistency, threw down the gauntlet to bronzed warriors 
of hay and potato fields. It must be admitted that in these bouts 
those to the manor born were generally victors, though at times 
some new fangled agricultural tool, a prolific seed corn or luscious 
melon, and an improved method of cultivation brought to the atten- 
tion of the Grange by some amateur spendthrift-enthusiast finally 
won out. 

Alfalfa Road to Independence. 

I recollect one chap who advocated alfalfa growing, and had all 
the farmers by the ears with his wonderful tales of the fine crops he 
grew for cow, horse and poultry fodder. He explained that the suc- 
cessful growing of alfalfa consists in keeping weeds out of the soil by 
repeated cultivation prior to seed-sowing, which, in our climate, should 
be about August 15, and in supplying plenty of lime. Experience 
taught that an interesting and important item is the inoculation 
of the soil at the rate of three bushels to the acre with soil which 
has already grown alfalfa. It must be sandy or gravelly loam, with 
no rocks nor clayey sub-soil, a difficult condition to find in Hillcrest 
Manor. Planted thus the roots delve sometimes to a depth of twenty 
feet or more, and the field will last a lifetime, yielding, under favor- 
ing conditions, three or four crops each year. 



74 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

This was one of the many experiments of the amateur which 
made the men of the soil at times give even a city greenhorn his due. 

In these winter evening meetings, a simple discussion often 
developed into a battle royal over the method of running a silo ; to 
weight or not to weight, whether it was wise to feed horses on 
ensilage or injurious to man to feed pigs on brewery grains, what 
were the best paying crops, also irrigation and crop succession, what 
kind of green soiling was the best and the correct proportions of 
lime, muck, and nitrates to make a sand dune rival in fertility the 
drained river bottom lands. 

To enter the realm of insect fighting, including the elm beetle 
and gypsy moth, as well as diseases that are killing the apple, peach, 
pear, chestnut and walnut trees, the proper scraping and tarring of 
trees, etc., was to run the risk of prolonging the discussion until 
morning milking time.* 

The County Fair. 

The County Fair was the climax of enjoyment, prepared for 
and looked forward to for months. The farmer's calendar 
in many, to him, important matters dates either forward or backward 
from the County Fair. In it the farmer's family also have some slight 
recreation, the wives and daughters, who feel the heavy burden of 
house chores and farm housekeeping, the monotonous grinding routine 
of which brings many to the verge of insanity — indeed, statistics are 
said to prove that the inmates of insane asylums include a large 
percentage from the farm. A brain saver and a brain builder is the 
change of thought and ambition to excel that come so largely through 
the County Fair. All hail to it and its prizes, rewards of merit and 
honorable mention, desperately fought for and on rare occasions won. 

Serious Symptoms of Building Mania. 

Thus in my musings, I trace the beginnings of Hillcrest Manor 
when it comprised but potato and hay fields and wild pasture land, 
with a single homestead crowning the hill. The building mania even 
then throbbed in our veins and tugged at purse strings. 

The Last Stand Against the Insect World. 

The yellows began to claim their prey in the peach orchard, 
and apple blight, assisted by the predatory coddling moth, scarred 
fruit and limb and sapped the heart's life from many a noble tree. 
The black knot seemed to grow again in a single night on plum 
and quince, and our hay crop was being steadily throttled by 
Canada thistle, white daisy and wild carrot. But emancipation ivas 
dawning in the rapid growth of shrubbery, trees and vines on all 
building sites as well as in the arboretum. That two-mile floral 

*Tanglefoot as a barrier was voted a better insect discourager than bod lime which 
sometimes blights the tree. 



SERIO US SYMPTOMS OF BUILDING MANIA 75 

ribbon took on added beauty, and, as the years passed, seemed to 
fairly shout development. 

The time was ripe, and I began in earnest to work out my villa 
dream, closely identified with which is the arboretum, tying our 
Farmarcadia together. 

Does it pay to have no recreation gaps between the working 
hours, hours that crowd each other hard in the mad rush to accom- 
plish? A genuine burden-bearer — one forced by circumstances to be 
a pack-horse-treadmill-worker — loved to quote the well known lines: 

"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." 

Many a man in these strenuous days whose obituary gives his 
age as less than fifty years, has lived full five centuries, gauged by a 
slow moving past. Activity is joy, and roadways blocked with worries 
and wearing responsibilities, when met in the right spirit, become 
broad highways illumined from the source of all light. 

"God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world." 



76 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




BUILDING SITES 77 



CHAPTER III. 

The Evolution of Farmarcadia Into Hii.lcrest Manor, 
Beginning With the Arboretum — Tree Planting — 
Anywhere Plants — Wonder Tree — Horticultural 
Alphabet — Poets' Corner — Pruning — Blue Rib- 
bon Seven — Forest Thinning — Maple 
Sugar Harvest — Bugs and Butterflies— 
"Yarbs" — Wild Garden — Bogland — 
Try-out Nursery. 

"God the first garden made, and the first city Cain." 

THESE pages include not only the planting scheme of the 
arboretum and fruticetum but a more or less complete descrip- 
tion of their growth. In our lettered plan a diamond stands for an 
evergreen, a circle for deciduous trees, a triangle for herbaceous 
plants, while the figures within the symbol refer to an alphabetically 
indexed reference map and book, which give the name and location 
of each plant — evergreen, deciduous, herbaceous, perennial, and bien- 
nial, interspersed and varied from year to year with bright hued 
annuals raised from seed, root, or cutting. 

Plants were so placed that the taller backgrounded the low- 
growing varieties, while color arrangement in planting was care- 
fully considered both for summer and winter effects, the red branches 
of the dogwood, for instance, contrasting effectively with the bright 
yellow growth of the willows and the pea-green stalks of the kerria. 
backed by silver white birches that in turn fronted evergreens. 
These were in rare accord on glamored winter days "wherein 
the air bit shrewdly" and later prolonged the "uncertain glory of an 
April day." Did I plant them all? Yes every one, and nurtured 
them like children. No night was too dark for me to locate this or 
that shrub and tree. 

Building Sites. — Plantings. 

Each desirable building site was planted to beautify future lawns 
and develop vistas, aided by ornamental trees and shrubs, while along 
the highway frontage every fifty feet were set Wier's cut-leaf maples, 
forming a verdure-roofed roadway. 

Retinosperas ami Biotas, both plain and variegated, broad ami 
feathery-leaved; the tropical looking empress tree (Paulownia 
imperialis), the queenly Chinese magnolia, and its American relative 
the cucumber tree, glorious rhododendrons, azaleas, and the rare 
plants that Japan has poured in such prodigal profusion over our 
land, we planted by the hundred. 



78 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



The Horticultural Sextette, or Anywhere Plants. 

Twenty-five years ago the ordinary village home boasted a 
wistaria over the front door, a clematis on veranda post, and a 
few scattered lilacs, spireas and weigelas on lawns or backgrounding 
box-edged walks and alleys. Today among hundreds of new varieties 
the poorest can afford the following six glorious and inexpensive 
plants: Ampelopis veitchii (Boston or Japanese Ivy), California 
privet, Thunbergii berberis, Hydrangea paniculata grandi-flora, 
flora, the rambler rose — preferably the crimson and pink rather than 
the yellow and white, or that "agin natur" novelty of novelties, a 
blue rose, the latest rambler to climb the fence which encloses the 
queen of flowers — and Rudbeckia laciniata or golden glow. Ampelop- 
sis and Rudbeckia we grew satisfactorily from seed. 

The above plants will transform hedge rows, unsightly boulders, 
stumps, and even uncouth architecture into curves and lines of beauty. 

Four main rules guided us in the laying out and care of the 
arboretum : 

1. Drainage, deep digging and enriched soil. 

2. Knee, hand and foot work in straightening roots and pressing 
the earth between and about them when planting stock. 

3. Pruning when planting, also at any time when not too wet or 
cold to work comfortably (except those in which sap flows freely, as 
in the maple and some vines, especially the grape). A convenient time 
for the worker was the main consideration rather than season. 




THE WONDER TREE. 



THE UOSDER TREE 79 

A somewhat bread and radical statement which must not be construed 
to mean that bleeding, bloom, and fruitage should not be considered, 
as shown in cutting back grape, rose, hydrangea, and such plants 
as bloom profusely on new growth (a point to be carefully guarded), 
but, broadly speaking, we found time of year a secondary consid- 
eration. 

Tree and Shrub Planting and Watering. 

4. We never watered except during the act of planting, or in 
some killing drought. Why coddle the roots, teaching them to seek 
the surface for a daily drink which is sure to be withheld in a moment 
of forgetfulness. Let them work their passage, dig downward in the 
soil, assist by cultivation and mulching, but do not pauperize. Learn 
the stern lesson taught by the fairly thrifty, asphalt-covered roots of the 
city-grown tree. Rough treatment, but it proves the statement. In the 
case of plants treated as annuals, and in succulent growths which 
require cascades of water to attain their prodigious size, like the 
canna, the ricinus, the elephant's ear, and many perennial grasses, 
submit to the slavery if you crave the result, but let the hard wooded 
trees and shrubs grub for their living. If watering is an actual neces- 
sity to save the life of the plant, let it be a thorough drenching, then 
mulch, and only repeat under dire need. 

As a rule, herbaceous plants were separated by cutting or 
dividing in two offshoot, clump, and rhizome, and replanting every 
three or four years, soil being renewed and enriched. New stock was 
thus gained with which to enlarge the floral kingdom. 

Petal, stamen, stigma, anther, pollen, ovule, calyx, sepal, and 
corolla became household words in that first winter of study after 
buying the farm. Evening after evening we dissected plant and 
flower, first the green sepalled calyx, then the petals of the corolla, 
so thoroughly protecting the pollen bags or anthers which nestle 
within, and lastly the long pistil with its three essential parts, the 
viscid ended stigma, ever ready to grasp pollen from the legs or bodies 
of visiting insects and carry it through the style to the waiting 
ovules. When hyla and catkin heralded the arrival of spring with 
feverish haste we haunted bog, wood, meadow, and hillside to test 
book knowledge in field practice. 

The Wonder Trees of the Pinetum. 

Early in Farmarcadian days we developed a love for trees, 
and planted over one hundred thousand trees, shrubs, vines, and herba- 
ceous plants in Hillcrest Manor, prominence being given to that 
wonder tree, the evergreen, which even when weighted with glittering 
ice or fleecy snow, sways gracefully, unscathed by biting blast and 
unscorched by arid heat, symbolizing everlasting life, while fast 
growing maple and sturdy oak are absolutely dead for half the year. 



80 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Among our plantings of feature trees in the ranks of the weepers 
were willows, birches, mulberries, lilacs, cherries, hazels, dogwoods, 
the light green tufted Taxodium distichum, and elm and moun- 
tain ash, while among the cut-leaf were beech, birch, maple and 
sumach. 

In the seven rainbow colors lined up the maples, as seen in the 
varied shades of cut-leaved green, tri-color, gold, silver, purple 
and red, while our golden oak was a blue-blood tree. 

In poplars were also gold and silver and in the low-growing filbert 
the purple. These and many more yearly put forth leaf and blossom 
to gladden all who passed their way. 

Tree Outlines. 

Each season brought its nature study hours — the different shades 
of green in the spring, the depth of color in. summer, and the glorious 
kaleidoscopic changes in autumn, but in clear winter days we could 
best study tree outlines which centred about the two great divisions, 
excurrent, or straight trunk to the top, as in pin oak and poplar ; and 
the more abundant deliquescent, as seen in the trunk divided limbs of 
elm and willow. The bark named the tree and pointed to the pole 
as surely as the star. 

We crossed the threshold of one of the most interesting of 
nature's doorways when on a crisp December morning by starting into 
the woodland to learn the names of the leafless trees. Gracefully 
branched maple, towering elm, and shagbark slivered hickory lined 
up and answered promptly as well as the spotted plane tree, silver 
sheened birch and clean smooth limbed beech. It was child's play to 
niche the evergreens but the vast majority of the trees seemed a 
sealed book, yet ere willow and maple flowered we had mastered one 
secret of the woodland through bark, trunk, and limb. 

Horticultural Alphabet. 

We strove to grow at least a single specimen of all plants found 
in nurseries from one end of our country to the other that our climate 
and soil would support Careful planning and thorough cultivation 
gave us a rare anthology of flowers, and it was surprising how many 
grew to maturity, spite of infant diseases, and indefatigable, virulent 
enemies, but the nursery was a grand tree and shrub feeder, and from 
it were replaced all dead or sickly plants. The bare ground could 
scarcely be discerned through swirl of leaf and bloom that glorified 
the arboretum. Where it could be done to advantage, we planted 
thickly to get immediate results ; notably in the chubby, fibrous-rooted 
chaps, easy movers ; and sparsely in long, tap-rooted species that 
uproot grudgingly, filling the spaces with the former. When elbows 
touched, a Patrick, a spade and a wheelbarrow, together with an 
overcast day and seventy-five per cent, prospect of rain almost 
invariably reclaimed additional land to floral possibilities, and the 



PINEAPPLE CLOTH 81 

giving of needed air and sunshine speedily lengthened stems and 
branches of those that remained. Low growing box hedged the 
walks in the Colonial garden while high growing varieties were 
clipped into varied ornamental shapes. 

Beautiful was the spring awakening of Flora in the arboretum. 
The swelling pussy willows, cowl-crowned skunk cabbage whose 
broad green shafts seek the sunlight, and presage the rare spring 
blooming of snowdrop and crocus, and a bit later the yellow of the 
forsythia, often fringed with the damp spring snow T , its branches 
readily blooming when cut and put in water, or forced ahead of 
time in our hot-beds, all did their part toward vanquishing win- 
ter. Then came the pink-hued daphne and onward through the full- 
ness of bloom of spring, summer and fall, until we reach the witch- 
hazel, that last bloomer, the strange shrub that waits to adorn itself 
in yellow finery after it has been denuded of its leaves, and gives its 
life-blood to ease the pain of humanity. Under the warming rays 
of the sun, this botanical catapult shoots the contents of its seed pods 
twenty feet or more somewhat in the same way as in continuance 
of life the poplar, a true anemophilous tree, explodes anther bags 
of pollen which, borne on the wings of the wind, reaches its consort 
tree before leaf growth can thwart its mission. The Chinese witch 
hazel was in the front rank of our late winter flow T ering shrubs. 

The Banner Shrub. 

What family of shrubs do I most enjoy? If a choice must be 
made, give me the Viburnum, that fructifies in berries of white, black, 
coral and scarlet, and whose flowers and foliage vary greatly in size 
and color. Viburnum rhytidophyllum and Viburnum Davidii were 
evergreen crowms of glory 'mid their fellows. 

The wand-like red-berried Indian currants and Cornelian cher- 
ries we placed in the arboretum to contrast strongly with the some- 
what straggly growth of the snowberry. Fronting these were 
Japanese iris, the iKempferi, whose eyes of purple and white, bronze 
and yellow, peer out at one between their flag-like leaves like enor- 
mous spitz dog-faced pansies. Spain, Germany and Siberia were all 
taxed to fill out our iridescent fleur-de-lis patchwork quilt. 

Beyond the beds of iris grew stately agaves (century plant) 
many of them variegated, and near by in serried columns the yucca, 
familiarly called the Spanish bayonet or dagger or Adam's needle, 
with its wand-like stalks of white, bell-capped flowers, nodded to us 
as it did to the cliff dwellers who once spun and wove into clothing the 
threads that dangle from the spike-like leaves, as is done today in 
the far off Philippines from the foliage of the pineapple.* 

*To many the Yucca thread woven garmentsof the cliff dweller shown in ourmuseums 
arc of keen interest. 



82 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Pineapple Cloth. 

Many a New England housewife in olden times robed her- 
self for "meetin' " in the yellow pineapple cloth brought from across 
the water. 

Among the yuccas grew the fiery, yellow-hearted, red-jacketed 
red-hot-poker-plant, the tritoma, or torch lily, and from the shores 
of the Sound a batch of prickly pears was transplanted that looked 
like a bed of hardy, creeping cacti. In doing this we encountered 
for the first time the wood-jigger, that buries itself beneath the skin 
and revels in eating it in chunks. A soaking in hot water and rough 
treatment with a scrub brush dislodged the intruder, but he left 
unpleasant memories. 

One shrub section included the graceful leaved Desmodium, 
the fragrant strawberry shrub (the calycanthus), the bush honey- 
suckle, Japan quince, sweet pepper bush, colutea, Persian and Japanese 
lilac, English holly, and Styrax japonica. 

The Poets' Corner. 

The Poets' Corner was edged by a border of narcissi. 
"Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps" 
was well exampled in this little plot where were seed-grown plants 
from Stratford-on-Avon to Kendal Green and Abney Park, and from 
Pere la Chaise to the Florentine and Roman "God's Acres" that front 
the Porta la Pinta and Porta san Paola. 

Many friends encouraged this fancy, sending rare specimens. 
One enthusiast mailed a few grains that had lain dormant wrapped 
with a mummy for two thousand years in a Theban tomb, but truth 
compels the statement that Connecticut soil and prodigious care failed 
to bring them to life. 




LEAVES OF THE OAK OF MAMRE. (Actual size.) 

On March 9, 1870, I stood under an enormous oak tree, one of 
the very few Abraham's oaks, or oaks of Mamre remaining at that 
time on the Plains of Mamre in Bethlehem of Judea. The giant 
of this group was close to ten feet in diameter, a guarantee of its 
great age. It was undoubtedly alive, and may have been an old tree 
when King Herod sent forth his fiendish edict to slay the children 
of Judea. 



THE POETS' CORNER 83 

This mighty tree's progenitors sheltered Abraham and his flocks 
when they came up from Egypt to possess the land. 

"Then Abraham removed his tent and came and dwelt 
in the Plains of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built an 
altar unto the Lord." Genesis XIII, 18. 

The memory of those huge sheltering oaks of Mamre, the scene 
of his joyous entrance into Hebron, stayed with the patriarch Abra- 
ham until the end, and in the cave of Macphelah, almost within their 
shadow, according to his dying behest, the stricken Israelites buried 
their revered leader. Here also, in this family rock tomb in natural 
sequence, Isaac and Jacob, his son and grandson, found a final resting 
place near these same mighty trees that Abraham loved. 

I picked the above peculiar leaves that spring morning from 
the only one of the Mamre oaks now left, which is, I am told, the only 
mature specimen of its species in the world. Perhaps we kept the 
half dozen acorns too long before planting, for they refused 
to germinate, though they received more care than any other seeds 
in the Poets' Corner, ami disappointment number twenty was 
entered on the debit side of the ledger page marked "Experiments," 
under which caption we chronicled successes and failures in Farm- 
arcadia. 

The Tree. 

The best epitome of human life in nature is the tree, so closely 
symbolizing birth, growth, beauty, strength; sturdily withstanding 
blast and storm, until, like an old man bowed with a century of work, 
the roots loosen, the. top breaks, the trunk splits asunder, and worm 
and mold attack that which, having performed its work, must 
submit to dissolution and readjustment, as Dr. Holmes realistically 
pictures: 

"Now his nose is thin, 
And it rests upon his chin 

Like a staff; 
And a crook is in his back 
And a melancholy crack 
In his laugh." 

Joys of Pruning. 

Immediately after the tree was planted, its methodical care 
began, but it was rarely arduous work; a lopped off limb; an 
uprooting of the suckering sprouts, a thinning of the branches, 
made a thing of beauty of what might have been supreme ugliness. 
Neglect of the pruning knife, with too close planting, will absolutely 
ruin the most attractive tree. One of our greatest pleasures was that 
of pruning. To let in air and sunlight; to spread out the spindler, 
and train upward the low grower; to cut out the leprous black knot 



84 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

in the plum and quince — almost a herculean task after neglect had 
allowed the disease to gain headway — to remove cancer-rot from the 
older trees, paint the bruised wood and then fill the cavity with cement ; 
and to fasten with iron rods controlled by turnbuckles the large limbs 
that threatened to split away from the parent stem, but which with 
care would live for years, — all this was most fascinating. 

Haphazard Forest Thinning. 

No ruthless gang of wood choppers cleared our woods, for an 
hour of ignorant labor might have destroyed the matchless growth of 
many years, so we blazed for cutting such trees as checked the develop- 
ment of the best, but allowed among others dogwood, laurel and 
sassafras, as well as bitter sweet and native clematis (virgin's bower) 
to grow as nature willed.* 

The cup-shaped tulip, with its cone shaft of verdure; the fra- 
grant, sturdy, right-angle growth of the sassafras — even the scarred 
and blotched buttonwood or sycamore, which is a veritable giant, as we 
in the east know trees, and gives up in a day its first crop of delicate 
green leaves to its inveterate fungus enemy, then immediately reclothes 
its denuded branches — were all represented on the farm. 

The maple family in varied form and coloring has few peers, 
from the dwarf, split-thread-leaf maples of Japan, some of which 
retain their form for weeks after being picked, through all their 
varieties of gold and crimson to the graceful native maples that dot 
our landscape, and again the variegated vieing in color with the varie- 
gated arbutilon, among others the purple maple with its blood red 
under leaf, the tri-striped bark variety, also Wier's cut-leaf, of rapid 
growth, with gracefully festooned branches, its only bitter enemy the 
"four winds of heaven." 

"Clean as a maple" was rarely a misnomer. All were grace- 
ful and beautiful whether seen in massed outline or close detail. 

Colors from a purple which crowded black, to the lightest hues 
of green and bronze flashed in sunlight and waved with the breeze. 
In bark they ranged from the rugged cork to those as smooth as a 
beech and shaded from dark brown to the white and green striped. 

Maple Sugar Harvest. 

When summer's reign was ended, and the frost-laden north 
wind wrapped the sugar maple in its wonderfully beautiful mantle 
of yellow and red, we were glad to have planted this tree with such 
prodigality, with the idea of a farm industry in future years. Bar- 
ring a wandering rose bug and the borer, the maple has few insect 

*We uprooted the lamb-kill variety of laurel which grew sparsely in the sheep pasture 
and from which the bees distilled poisonous honey. 



THE BLUE RIB BOS SEVEN 85 

enemies, and drives its roots into the most unpromising soil, seeming 
at times almost to draw sustenance from the very rock, often shar- 
ing honors with the cedar in being a cleft-in-the-rock tree. Maples 
edged the arboretum, lined the drives and diversified the lawns in 
Hillcrest Manor. 

The Blue Ribbon Seven. 

Among other beautiful trees on our lawns were seven that halted 
the most uninterested and careless passer-by, and forced his admiration, 
one, the Cedrus deodora, whose rare, blue, moss-like foliage attracted 
instant attention. This was partially screened by a mixed group of 
Weymouth and red pines supplemented in winter with cedar boughs 
thrust into the ground, and built upward into a protecting bower 
shielding it from the death-dealing winter sun and biting wind. Near 
it was a Nordman's fir, the silver lining of whose leaves glisten in 
sunlight and moonlight, flanked on either side by Koster's Colorado 
spruce, as blue as bluest steel, while one hundred feet from any other 
tree grew a glorious, kingly copper beech, and directly across the 
lawn a magnificent specimen of one of the most beautiful trees 
grown, the fern-leaf beech. A golden oak glowed sunshine on the 
copper beech. Our seventh was the queenly, cut-leaf birch, whose 
silvery branches peeped through a tracery of delicate green leaves. 
A passing glance at this made one nature's debtor.* 

The above seven trees, with one exception, held the blue ribbon 
against all other aspirants, though it seems invidious to restrict one's 
selection to a paltry seven, when forest and nursery fairly teem with 
specimens clamoring for recognition. 

The Elm. 

Towering above the blue ribboners and in a sense outrivaling 
their skin-deep beauty, was the king of trees, the elm, the pride of 
our forbears. For nearly fifty years two of these had looked down 
on the farm house roof, and with o'erclasped branches seemed to 
breathe companionship, protection and even benediction. It was 
fully twenty feet to the first dividing limb crotch, so that sunlight 
and air brightened and cooled the dwelling in summer and in winter 
the gracefully swaying network of limbs and branches gave life to 
a dead landscape. f 

The dwarf horse chestnut, the delicate leaved Sophora japonica, 
the tremulous silver and in contrast the golden poplar; the sturdy 
white oak whose outstretched arms sheltered our biggest herd of 
cattle, the buckeye and the xanthocera, cork and Camperdown elms, 
the rarely beautiful Cedrus Atlantica glauca, the Katsura tree, and 
in a low bit of ground the rosemary and Kilmarnock willows, as 

■A taxodium diestichujn fought hard for a niche in our arboreal hall of fame but was 
finally barred as to be at its best it requires the artificial aid of severe 1 pruning. 

"("Lightning and tornado, both dire enemies of tree life, were the undoing of our farm 
house elms. 



86 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

well as scores of others, gave beauty and variety to lawn, meadow, 
and hillside. 

Folly of Transplanting Forest Trees. 

Costly experiment taught that trees transplanted from the woods 
to the open generally stand still or die, while those from the nursery 
make rapid progress, that pruning both root and branch and several 
transplantings do wonders for tree development, but that native trees 
taken from a clearing often grow finely. 

The propagation of trees and shrubs from seeds was interesting, 
but the wait too long, except in the case of pit-grown peaches, which 
generally proved worthless sports. 

Spare the shears and you spoil the tree might well be axiomatic 
with the horticulturist, yet many an amateur hesitates before his 
choicest evergreens. We changed scores of straggling branched and 
bedraggled looking Norway spruces into pyramids of beauty from 
sod to topmost twig by simply beheading them a foot or two for 
several successive years, but not in freezing weather — thus giving the 
lie in part to the old saying: "The prettiest things in youth and the 
ugliest in old age are a pig, a negro baby, and an evergreen tree." 

The Monkey Climber. 

Among our natural curiosities was a wild grapevine that in 
some strange way had leaped without visible contact to the top of a 
lofty fifty-year old tree. It was fitly named the monkey climber and 
the loftiest vine in our viticetum. 

The snowy cascade of the weeping Japanese cherry, a three days' 
wonder, ere its rarely beautiful white blossoms, grown dingy, wilt 
and fall ; the weeping mulberry which screened an arbor seat 
and swept toward the ground in serried columns ; drooping beeches 
and birches silhouetting almost grotesquely against the sky-line, 
yet when well grown, rising like camels' humps, one above the other, 
intensifying the tall, straight, dignified beauty of contrasting poplars 
(the cottonwood) and lordly elms — all these and more were to be 
found in Hillcrest arboretum, in rare cases goaded into unusual forms 
by the pruning knife. The birches were lined to form a sentinel 
barrier that far outshone in beauty the time-honored picturesque 
Lombardy poplar that unless planted with a positive end in view, 
grows straggly and moth-eaten when it reaches lonely maturity. 

Twin Spurs of Guano and Shears. 

With guano and shears one can metamorphose everything that 
grows. Few trees are homelier when left to themselves to struggle 
and straggle along than Taxodium distichum (southern cypress) 
and few more attractive than this same tree when judicious 
pruning compels it against its habit to form a mass of closely grown, 
pea green, feathery foliage. The long waving branches of the 
weigela, the result of two or three years' pruning, are the acme of 



HISTORY SACRED AND PROFANE 87 

grace, tufted with pink blossoms in June, lacking only fragrance to 
rival the unrivaled apple blossom. With restraint removed they 
thrust with added force upward and downward their long graceful 
branches. Grown thus, once seen they can never be forgotten. 
Thunbergii berberis, which sometimes shrinks under the pruning 
knife, is a flaming torch in the autumn, and passes through the 
insect onslaught unscathed, as does the Vibernum plicatum, with its 
globular snow-white bloom, while the flowers of its American cousin 
no sooner begin to open than the petals are badly eaten and stained. 

In the Rosa rugosa from Japan, was found another seemingly 
insect-proof plant. Even when not in bloom its fresh luxuriant foliage 
and later scarlet haws were a delight to the eye. 

The scope of the arboretum constantly widened until it com- 
passed a great variety. Hundreds of grouped plantings showed in 
their season masses of vivid color. The azalea, garbed in carmine and 
orange; the rhododendron, with evergreen foliage and large blossoms 
of varied colors, and peonies and dahlias, practically fungi-immune 
plants giving glorious color and form effects — single, double, starred 
and threaded, and well worth wider cultivation — vied with each other 
to brighten our floral realm, while in late summer came the big heads 
of hydrangeas of roseate hue, which when cut and dried far surpass 
in beauty the everlasting, that "posy" of childhood. 

From trees and shrubs to grasses is a wide leap, as they 
creep upward from the low, straggly, witch-grass-rooted variegated 
ribbon grass to the stately waving plumes of the Erianthus ravennae 
or the more tender King Henry of Navarre white plumed pampas 
grass. The evergreen, Bambusa metake, rarely grown, but of great 
merit, its pinnated leaves forming a mass of verdure both summer 
and winter, carpeted several low, damp and unsightly spots, while 
from Japan we had the cross-striped Eulalia, the Zebrina japonica 
varigata, that plant that disproves the sometimes accepted theory 
that variation of color is a symptom of debility as it is painfully healthy 
from deepest rootlet to highest leaf tip. The Arundo donax varigata 
needing winter protection is far more striking than the plain green 
variety, and with its corn-like growth o'ertops and contrasts well with 
the reed-like waving leaves of the Eulalia gracillima. We leaned 
strongly toward variegated plants, from the Euonymous radicans var, 
and the graceful variegated kerria, one of the most striking shrubs, 
up through sturdy weigela, dogwood, forsythia, althea and privet, 
represented in the tree line by a towering, spotted, acuba ash, seem- 
ingly a giant croton, and maples galore. 

History, Sacred and Profane. 

Many a page of history, both sacied and profane, can be read 
in the arboretum. Yonder is the massed purple bloom of the Judas 
tree (the Cercis), and near it the Japanese variety of the same, 
which has a closer blossom and richer hue. Next grows the bitter 



88 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

wormwood,, of shiftless and straggling habit, and in season the 
morphine poppy of China, that life saver or destroyer (according 
to its use) whitens the ground with its falling petals, while close by 
is one of those willows whose parent stock wept o'er the grave of 
the prisoner of St. Helena. At its base grew a clump of conium 
(poison hemlock), Athens' unrighteous death draught for phil- 
osopher and criminal. A thicket of nicotianas (tobacco plant) 
with their tough green leaves and tropical growth represents a cen- 
tury or more of slavery for the negro cultivators and probably many 
centuries yet to come of slavery to consumers. In the background 
is the Paradise Tree or Tree of Heaven, the unfairly maligned 
though odorous root-spreading ailanthus. 

Lilies were grown in large beds set generally in sandy leaf mold. 
There were many varieties, from the maidenly shy, naiad-like drooping 
lily of the valley that seeks shade and grows best in damp soil, to the 
sturdy, brazen, gold-banded lily of Japan, through all gradations of 
Easter lily, aggressive, staring tiger lily, yellow field lily, 
oddly spotted toad lily, the Tricytis hirta from Japan, and near it, 
the Tigridia, every morning showing its tender newly-born bizarre 
blossoms, the low growing, variegated leaved Funkia, or day lily, 
the St. Bruno's lily and blackberry lily, also narcissi in dazzling hue. 

Large beds of high stalked perennial phloxes, nodding standards 
of flaming color half the summer, and pink and white close to the 
ground patches of phlox subulata, also Astilbe japonica, the latter 
forced in winter, were plentifully scattered through the grounds. 
Beds of blue-eyed forget-me-nots and clumps of dog-faced pansies were 
planted profusely and mind-labeled flowers that talk, Aquilegia 
from the native red and yellow to the cultivated browns and grays, 
gave charming variety, and bulbs from scillae to sword-leaved gladioli 
grew in rare abandon and great variety. No longer did June sadly 
view the shriveled dying blossoms of iris and columbine for late bloom- 
ing varieties of these and other gorgeous early flowers lingered with us 
until autumn — Veronica, the iron plant, snow on the mountain 
(variegated spurge) ginseng (at eight dollars a pound, a valuable 
crop) jonquils, lupines, pyrethrum, tarragon, turtle-head, rock cress, 
vetch, wood sorrel, pinks, perennial pea, cinquefoil, harebell, Jacob's 
ladder, knotweed, liverwort, loosestrife, lungwort, leek, mandrake, 
sneeze-weed, sneezewort, bell flower, primrose, foxglove, mahonia, 
monkshood, and blue spirea grew in profusion, and hollyhock and 
larkspur waved triumphantly aloft their banner spikes of bloom. 

"And the jessamine fair, and the sweet tuberose, 
The sweetest flower for scent that grows, 
And all rare blossoms from every clime 
Grow in that garden in perfect prime." 



UNLOCKIXG NATURE'S SECRETS 89 

Among the tender varieties were the odd little cigar plant, set 
near a bed of sensitive plants that shrank into themselves at the slight- 
est touch, and next to it a bed of ice plants glittered in the sunlight. 

Yellow-Hemmed moneywort gave us a full money's w T orth of 
compact bloom for an eighth of a mile in the spaces between 
plants in the arboretum, but after a couple of years the irksome and 
back-breaking task of separating weed and moneywort ended this 
dream of a golden carpet beneath the shrubbery. 

Royal Pedigree of the Fields. 

The arboretum had a wide gamut, native shrub often side by side 
with the rarest products of China and Japan, and, as the despised 
and down-trodden delicately laced wild carrot outshines in beauty 
some plant of extended pedigree, so the brilliant scarlet berries of the 
black alder, the intense orange tuft of the milkweed (that variety 
seen far afield) ; the feathery, curled wild clematis, the clambering, 
orange-fruited bitter sweet, and that glorious red dart of the fireweed 
shamed into mediocrity plants whose lineage is traced through a 
hundred propagating houses. 

In our collection were the hobble bush, Scotch broom, wayfaring 
tree, the withe-rod, the hazel bush, whose branches the well digger 
believes weirdly disclose hidden waterways, and a clump of flowering 
raspberries, shading a patch of winterberries. 

Stroll Path. 

Amid the dense growth backgrounding the arboretum was laid 
out a stroll-path a half mile in length, completely hidden from the 
drive by the entourage of blossom and foliage. Rustic seats, generally 
a simple log, w T ere set in bosky cover in this greenery retreat of the 
birds, and here one learned a few of their many secrets. 

Unlocking Nature's Secrets. 

It was once my good fortune to spend a day with our State micro- 
biologist. We roamed through fields, woods and fruit orchards, 
on our way stepping into a vegetable cellar. It took a full half 
hour to drag my friend out again to the daylight, away from cobweb, 
cocoon, dust-covered beam and wall, to me dank nothings ; to him 
another world. Then came a rarely instructive walk of barely half 
a mile but lasting long past dinner time. Keenly interesting was this 
opening of nature's storehouse by one who holds a key. Discoveries 
everywhere! The gray bunched elongation of a grass spear, a cocoon, 
a slight increase in the thickness of an apple twig, another snugly 
clinging to the bark; the curled leaf "some happy creature's palace"; 
a bruised twig; a broken limb; a trampled bit of grass; a footprint 
in the soft mud at the edge of the brook; a twitter in yonder copse; 
a bursting song of divine melody from the topmost twig of a black 
walnut ; a whirr as of flapping wings; the buzz of insects — a thousand 



90 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

— no: a million sights and sounds to feed eye, ear and brain, if man 
could but grasp them. The camera was a constant friend and life 
had an added charm when the photomicrographic field still farther 
enlarged our vision. 

Bugs and Butterflies. 

Introduction Day was repeated several times by that obliging 
State microbiologist and when fall winds had swirled from the oak 
most of its leaves and disclosed to our newly awakened appreciation 
of insect life the tightly woven leaf nest of the caterpillar, intro- 
ductions had culminated in an extended but one sided calling list, and 
as winter approached we lost no time in making many aurelian calls. 

Man's very existence rests on the gauze wings of the bee and 
the butterfly. At the base of the pyramid of all life is the insect 
world. An insectless world is in the main a flowerless world, with the 
unavoidable sequence of death to bird, beast and man. Adjustment 
and balance can only be obtained through control of the predatory 
hordes that swarm over our planet, their seeming aim man's destruc- 
tion, but changed by a directing hand to construction. It is an 
innumerable army that of these night and day propagators and scav- 
engers who close heel man's progress toward the zenith of his 
powers, and as he draws aside the veil and peers into the outer court 
of this phase of nature he senses unseen and potent forces far beyond 
his present ability to understand. The microscope and the avarium 
aid mightily toward mastering the alphabet of the insect life. 
Man's physical inhumanity to man is as nothing to the carnage and 
butchery with which the insect world reeks from pole to pole. Let 
us hope that the line immortalizing the dying worm "it feels a pang 
as deep as when a giant dies" is only poetic license. 

Insect life is prolific in schemes to side-track the juggernaut of 
destruction that even before birth is often on its trail following out 
the wonderful warring laws by which nature is kept in equilibrium.* 

When the praying martin or devil's riding horse fiercely devours 
his victims alive, and the ichneumon fly incubates under the skin or 
within the intestinal canal of its benefactor, then slowly devours the 
inner vitals, pierces through the skin an avenue to freedom, and leaves 
by the wayside the shell tenement of its protector, let us hope that 
neither nerve, muscle, nor delicate organ has felt what to man's sensi- 
tively attuned system would have been untold agony. Insect life, 
the most prolific of all life, claims the closest study. Here the sur- 
vival of the fittest is pronounced. To eat, to live, to escape its 
enemies and to propagate, is its entire decalog, as in primeval man, 
but the endless nonillions of the insect world aggregating in the 



*The star and the aphis are extremes in realms heretofore practically untrod by man. 
Authorities state that a single pair of garden aphides absolutely undisturbed would in a few- 
months plaster the entire globe with a solid mass of their progeny, as the fish of the ocean 
unless preyed on by their fellows would turn that stupendous ocean into a mass of putrid flesh. 

A world out of balance would cease to be a world. 



EGGS TO IMAGO 91 

Lepidopteras alone Over fifty thousand named species, fortunately still 
grovel and see but that which keeps them alive. 

Among the fascinating facts that after dinner studies taught and 
which we had little trouble in proving was that the hairy caterpillar 
who lays her eggs along the edges of a freshly eaten leaf does so 
with the deliberate purpose of having her offspring devour the vitals 
of the voracious insect that gulps them down. Mightily interesting 
was that insect who carries sail covers just as the yachtsman does to 
protect the wings of his yacht, with the deeper purpose of color 
disguise from his enemies. 

The tent caterpillars pitch their moisture, predatory insect, and 
even bird-proof tents in the forked branches of the cherry and apple. 
They are strongly built and will stand persistent onslaught. After 
foraging, the colony returns to the fold from time to time to recover 
from its gluttonous debauches. 

Leaf-Rollers. 

We found that the leaf-roller weevil partially cuts off the supply 
of sap from the leaf to make it limp enough to roll into a snug egg 
pocket. Leaf hoppers hopped into the spread net of the carnivorous 
spider, the one who swallows his nearest relatives with fiendish gusto. 

Some plants guard with a hairy growth their chalice of nectar 
from such crawling freebooters as ants and beetles, saving their mines 
of sweetness for the bee and his pollen carrying fellows. 

A wonderfully busy and particular little fellow is that same 
pollinating bee. Unlike the fly, who takes everything in sight, he 
demands aesthetic coloring, choicest nectar, and delicious odor. Much 
of bee life begins its work 'mid the willow blossoms of early spring 
and the death of the fall asters sees the blotting out of a vast major- 
ity of these mighty purveyors to man's existence. 

Egg to Imago. 

Within the egg of a canker worm is epitomized the beginning 
of many a parasitical insect. Another parasite dwelling in its 
fellows is so wedded to hygiene as to cut a sewage outlet in the skin 
of his living, pulsating temporary home through which to eject all 
refuse. The woolly bear caterpillar thatches its cocoon with its own 
wiry spiny hair to withstand and discourage bird attacks. 

Laze Bugs. 

Laze bugs, such as the ambush, the flower bug and the ant lion, 
who can starve like a camel, eschew foraging, but, securely hidden, 
spring on their unsuspecting victims as they seek the lure of blossom 
nectar or inadvertently slide into the little sand pit trap built and set 
by his lordship, the ant lion, plebeianly called the doodle bug. 

Typical marauders were the wasps. With omniverous appetites 
they stung fruit and insect alike, often killing the active cicadas. 



92 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Cuckoos of the Insect Tribe. 

Cuckoos of the insect tribe are legion, and not only parasites, 
but often assassins, laying their eggs in the nests of other insects, fully 
cognizant that their progeny will eat their foster brothers and sisters 
in both egg and body form. 

The Skunk Insect. 

The saw fly unsheathes her pair of double action cross-cut and 
splitting saws to mutilate and deposit in leaf and tender twig her 
eggs which, when hatched, repeat the vandal act of their progenitors. 
The saw fly is the skunk of the insect tribe, and on occasion squirts a 
moist and acid stream on its enemies. 

As the track walker swings a warning red lantern, so the color 
warning in the flashings of some species of black and red-winged 
insects proclaims to marauding freebooters that spiny hairs sting and 
acid flesh sickens, thus for the time being postponing the inevitable. 

Queen of Night. 

The Queen of Night, the Luna, as well as the hawk moths, in 
appearance like humming birds, were among our richest treasures 
'mid a collection that grew apace as our interest in the wide field of 
lepidoptera increased. We aimed to know the genealogical tree from 
deepest rootlet to topmost twig of every specimen in our little cabinet, 
which was jealously guarded within protecting glass from rodent and 
moth. The evolution from egg to worm or larva and from larva to 
pupa or chrysalid, thence to fly and again back to egg, was a fascinat- 
ing study. Head, thorax, abdomen, antennas, two winged and four 
winged, four legged and six legged, all came in unending procession 
under the microscope, which opened wide the door to a heretofore 
closed world. 

Though unable to attest by sight that the industrious ant was 
as well a foster mother, carrying within its protecting nest the eggs 
of other insects and rearing them with her own, it so read and we 
accepted it as we did many another surprising statement that we had 
neither time nor ability to prove, such as the ant keeping milch cow 
aphides and slaves. 

One most interesting example of concealment was found on an 
elm tree; a caterpillar having a rough serrated bulging skin, an exact 
counterpart of the ridges in the elm leaf — even the sharp eyes of the 
birds seemed but rarely to pierce this environmental disguise. 

The Tramp Insect. 

Tramp by name and nature one might label the walking stick. 
The cares of motherhood sit lightly on her shoulders, as she drops 
her eggs helter-skelter in grass, woodland, or bog, and but few escape 
the maw of the hungry ones. 

It was rare joy to thus roam in this minor within a major 
world and watch in sunlight and shadow, in dense wood and open 



HAWKS OF THE INSECT WORLD 93 

meadow, the great unending procession of insect Life, the alder leaf 
case hearer staggering along under his pack, and near him a sturdy 
caterpillar laden with a whole nest of parasitical eggs, each contain- 
ing an embryo grave digger, which he must carry to his grave. Slen- 
der waisted mud and digger wasps we found 'mid the insects that 
pupate in earth cells. The list of non-silk spinning cocoon manu- 
facturers includes many vegetivorous insects, the potato bug, wire 
worm, crane fly, cut and tomato worm and root eating maggots. 
There also we dug up many of the fruit eaters in the first ranks 
of which were the curculio, the canker worm and apple maggot. The 
elm tree sphinx (at times, the immovable) and the destructive elm 
beetle, fortunately for the tree lover, are also earth pupaters. Tangle- 
foot encircling the elm trunk will keep her well under foot. The regal 
moth, the zebra caterpillar and a full line of grass diggers, all traced 
their ancestral homes to earth catacombs. In most of our insect hunts 
we found the ever busy ichneumon flies flitting from place to place, 
one main object in life being to puncture the skin of some less active 
insect and oviposit their death eggs broadcast among their fellows. 

Hawks of the Insect World. 

Dragon flies, as they lived their lives 'mid scurrying hordes of 
flying victims, were in a class by themselves. The true dragon we 
found lights with spread wings, the damsel with folded upright wings. 

Night Moths. 

In strolling through the woods close scrutiny discovered flat 
against the bark of beech and birch the night moths, each having 
selected the tree closest to its coloring, the sharpest eyed birds 
often taking them for a bit of wood. A true possum insect which 
feigns death when facing disaster is the large sphinx caterpillar, who 
han^s perfectly motionless head downward for hours to deceive its 
enemies. 

Beetle hunting yielded a wide quarry, — whirligig, water, snout, 
tiger, black, blister, long-horned, the smug little ladybird, the epitome 
of bug cleanliness, water scorpions, water striders and boatmen all 
involuntarily joined the stick pin colony. 

The great mass of insect life, aside from the stingers as exampled 
in bee, hornet and spider, and a few T spiny haired caterpillars, has no 
protection from its enemies. Concealment through color and in 
habitation is its strongest hold on life but at best often a broken reed. 

One Romeo of the insect world, the cricket, in season contin- 
ually serenades Juliet with rasping chirpings which rival the Katy- 
dids. 

Footless larvae, aphidivorous gourmands, stayed where maternity 
left them and leeched life from contact with branch, leaf, and insect. 

Plants as well as insects we found arrogantly commandeered by 
some of these tiny autocrats, notably when the willow leaves w r ere 



94 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

forced to surround insect eggs with red bean shaped galls and grass, 
stalk, branch, twig and leaf, and oak apple grew and thickened at 
their behest, giving up stored nutriment to nourish the trespassing 
pupa. 

Those interesting insects, the leaf tent miners, claimed our closest 
inspection. They were much at home among the oaks, red maples 
and locusts — their little brown parchment-like blotches giving loca- 
tion of another insect's palace within the leaf structure.* 

The butterfly field was studded with many stars and those of 
first magnitude included the black monarch, the sapphire mail, vice- 
roy, tortoise, swallow tail and tiger tail, red admiral, painted lady, 
the mourning cloak, the comma and the yellow asterias.' 

As a rule the insect world is an orphaned world. It is true the 
monarch and tortoise butterflies and a few other species follow the 
birds to the South in large flocks, some locusts bury in the ground, 
notably the seventeen year cicadas, and a few butterflies, for example 
the mourning cloak, hibernate in hollow tree or under buildings, but 
the great mass of struggling, warring insect life, when its purpose 
of scavenging, propagating and protecting its unborn offspring is 
accomplished, joins that endless, ever moving procession of the passers 
into the beyond and an orphaned progeny takes up and repeats the 
endless order of being. 

Our Rosarium. 

"Where you tend a rose, my lad, 
A thistle cannot grow.'' 

A patch three rods square was given up to the queen of flowers. 
Hardy perpetuals were the favorites but a bed of teas bloomed 
the entire summer even to early December, and, sheltered and pro- 
tected, wintered finely. Tree roses, as well as tree peonies, cornered 
the rosarium. 

The same three rod patch was a battle ground whereon raged 
our fiercest combats with the insect world, but eternal vigilance 
gave an unrivaled harvest of form and color. 

Pruning and budding shrubs in tree form we tried out, notably 
in the rose, azalea, and hydrangea, but soon concluded that a tree's 
a tree and a shrub's a shrub, which resulted in better balanced growth, 
flower, and fruit. 

A Semi-Tropical Corner. 

The very word tropics suggests gleaming sunshine, refreshing 
shade, bright colored birds and delicately perfumed flowers, and in 
our arboretum were corners where every plant, as well as its environ- 

s Close scrutiny of stream, branch and trunk revealed the cylindrical stone house of the 
caddis worm, the shell palace of the bark louse, the wooden burrow of the bumble bee, and 
the leaf mansion of the cherry leaf twig tier who builds a high class dwelling as Insect dwellings 
rank, homes doubtless as satisfying to them as the most pretentious dwellings of the race of giants 
that crush them under foot. The "dog eat dog" spirit of insect life, that indomitable- 
courage in bee, ant. flea, hornet, and mosquito, that neither cringes before nor fears its betters, 
if unchecked would soon depopulate the earth. 



PLANT LABELS THAT LABEL 95 

ment, seemed tropical. Here were the Aralia spinosa, or its more 
delicately framed sister, the Dimorphantus, which nevertheless yields 
its sceptre less quickly to the frost king, fronting a beautiful specimen 
of purple blossoming Paulownia imperialis; then came the copper- 
hued Ricinus and glorious cannas of rampant growth and brilliant 
color — assiduous care forcing the rankest growers to leap upward 
a dozen feet — while in the foreground were elephant's ears (Cal- 
adium) often a yard or more in length. By copious watering with 
liquid fertilizer many of its leaves grew to the length of five feet, 
and in sharp contrast and goodly quantity a wide variety of sub- 
arctic plants, among them a bed of edelweiss from parent stock we 
brought from the base of the Alatterhorn. Near by were Iceland 
moss, saxifrage, andromeda, ranunculus, clethra, and cloudberry. 

Semi-hardy Canna. 

During the past mild season, a canna bed planted against a south 
wall on slightly sloping ground wintered finely unblanketed, proving 
that with protection and under certain conditions, even in Connecticut, 
the tender canna can be thus handled. 

Evergreens were scattered through the grounds in over one 
hundred varieties, totaling well into the thousands. 

Grouped in effective contrast were green and golden yew, 
Colorado blue spruce, silver fir, cypress, and Biota, in silver and gold, 
the gold that shines as brightly in winter as in summer, as well as 
that variety that dons a bronze hued coat in the "melancholy days." 
There were also green and variegated, spatulated and pointed, feath- 
ered and curled Biotas and Retinosperas of varied hue, a bewildering 
labyrinth of form and color that to the real lover of trees spelled 
Elysian realms, and vastly improved the contour, foliage and bloom of 
our two-mile garden strip. 

Let me relate an incident apropos of tree, shrub and plant cultiva- 
tion. I had journeyed far to see what was considered the finest private 
collection of evergreens in our entire country, its owner a scholar, as- 
well as a strenuous business man. Standing before a bed of inconspicu- 
ous Echeverias of a hundred or more varieties that formed part of this 
wonderful collection of trees, shrubs, and plants, I asked the gardener 
why there was not a single label to be seen in the entire planting. 

The lack of real appreciation on the part of the family and 

friends was betrayed by his reply: "Mr. knows their names, 

I know their names, and no one else cares." 

Plant Labels That Label. 

We all cared in Hillcrest Manor; so did some of our friends. 
For labels, in addition to a carefully adjusted tree label, we used 
soft copper strips about four inches long and an inch wide. On these 
were indelibly traced with a sharp steel point the names, after which 
they were attached by a bit of copper wire to an eighteen-inch length 
of galvanized wire, one end of which was thrust into the ground at the 



96 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

base of each tree or shrub. This plan prevents the usual wire cutting 
of stem and branches, while labels are indestructible, and easily 
lifted and read. True, careless workmen sometimes disturbed or plant 
growth concealed, but generally before that happened the name of the 
plant was fixed in the minds of those who cared to know. Bark abra- 
sion in staking trees was prevented by having the cord or wire enclosed 
in a short piece of hose. 

The Only Work That Kills. 

Country life relieves nerve strain, sweeps cobwebs from 
the brain and gives much of the exhilaration called happiness, yet 
many stand within reach of these influences without sensing them. I 
can name a hundred or more men now in their graves, who I am 
certain, would have lived for years if their homes had been in the 
country. A new horse or cow, a brood of chickens just out of the 
shell, the bloom of a rare flower, a newly laid out road, a new dog 
kennel — even new disappointments and new worries so they are not 
associated with the daily grind — keep the heart young and pave the 
way to health. It is severe tension along one line that kills. I pity 
the man of millions or of pennies whose burden is daily carried in 
a beaten track from either counting house or ditch-digging to a city 
home. One needs the invigorating air of hill or ocean, not for a 
month or two, but for at least a portion of every month of the year, 
if it's no more than a Sunday tramp 'cross country. Man in his 
strenuous search for the fountain of youth finds that country living 
economizes best the "failing river of life." 

"The world is too much with us; late and soon 

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 

Little we see in nature that is ours ; 

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
****** 

Great God! I'd rather be 

A pagan, suckled on a creed outworn ; 

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 

Have feelings that were less forlorn ; 

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; 

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 
In the arboretum record book were scheduled with keen interest 
the homely every-day names borne by those flowers of the wild 
which grew in profusion on hill and in woodland and dale, meadow 
and rough pasture. Daffy down dilly, bouncing bet, black-eyed Susan, 
ox-eyed daisy, Hessian field daisy, Michaelmas daisy, hepatica, wild 
balsam or touch-me-not, corn flower or bachelors' button, incomparable 
dandelion — the every month in the year flower — sky-blue violets, 
spring beauties, and the wind flower, the anenome, grew in profusion, 
delighting the opening eyes of childhood with their continual floral 
surprises, and glorifying maturity with tenderest recollections of the 



"YARBS" 97 

budding romances of youth. Only common field flowers, but mighty 
factors through the centuries in developing and ministering to man- 
kind. 

"Yarbs." 

In different corners of the hedgerows grew "yarbs," and at the edge 
of the woods and brook shrubs and roots that from the time of the 
progenitors of Philip of Mount Hope through a half score of 
American ancestors have cured the ills of puling infancy and 
eased the aches of old age. 

"Scarce any plant is growing here that against death some weapon does 

not bear." 

Among these mute, but mighty warriors, defenders and prolongers 
of man's life, were thoroughwort, stramonium or jimson weed, chamo- 
mile, senna, boneset, snakeroot, rhubarb, self-heal, sarsaparilla, rue, 
smartweed, plantain, mandrake, gentian, wormwood, fever-bush, rheu- 
matism root, alum root, colchicum, bloodroot, bayberry, flagroot, 
arnica, colic root or star grass, sage, sorrel and tansy, and in larger 
growth toothache tree and balm of gilead, planted in a sheltered 
valley, as well as sassafras and witch-hazel, some of which in our 
home brewed extracts competed and often successfully with those of 
the apothecary shop. We brewed decoctions from lily of the valley 
and the fringe tree, and from the rampant growths of spearmint and 
spikenard, pennyroyal, bergamot, and spice bush, basil or thyme, 
fennel, caraway, marjoram, valerian and peppermint we expressed 
perfumes that permeated every corner of buffets and low and high- 
boys at times packed to their capacity with trousseaux, bed linen and 
best bibs and tuckers. 

The animal kingdom in our fields, woods and at brookside had 
generous representation from the old-time grannies, or rather let us 
crown them geniuses. They labeled goatsbeard, skunk-cabbage, horse- 
radish, horse-geranium and horse-mint, adder's tongue and rattle- 
snake root, spiderwort and bugbane, crowfoot and coltsfoot, cat- 
nip, ragged-robin and wake-robin, cat-tail flag and cat-brier ; cowberry, 
cowslip, cow-parsnip and goose grass, with a side line of milkweed, 
butter and eggs and buttercups, and dogwood, dogbane, foxglove, 
chickweed, hen and chickens, hogweed, horse tail, duckweed, leopard's 
bane, crane's bill and squirrel corn, crowberry and crowfoot, sheep- 
berry, shadbush, nannyberry, crab apple, and toadstools, often over- 
night-surprise-plants. The delicate pink of the bleeding heart, the 
spider-web gauze of baby's breath, the gracefully waving, pure 
white festoons of the bridal wreath, were near neighbors to the 
matrimony vine; its pale, dull pink blossoms, made still duller by the 
blazing star (called the devil's bit, the old fashioned cure for quinsy), 
and scarlet-lightning, which, with the Star of Bethlehem, brightened 
hillside and pasture. 



98 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Soil and varied conditions on hill, meadow, at brookside, in 
lowland, and deep woods of our two hundred and fifty acres made 
it possible, with the aid of the birds, for a wide range of plants to 
find a footing within our borders. There were man-of-the-earth and 
jack-in-the-pulpit, the bitter tasting corms of which gave Sir Bruin 
when he formerly ranged our marsh land a bog onion breath, 
near the skull-cap and squaw-root or cancer-root, the latter fasten- 
ing tightly to the roots of the beeches; maiden hair, the uncan- 
nily named corpse plant, commonly called the Indian pipe; also 
dragon-arum and dragon-root and prince's feather, St. John's wort, 
and St. Peter's wort. The pokeweed, which carries in its root 
death to humans, we destroyed. Great masses of ragweed, bur- 
dock, and mullein infringed on territory belonging to their 
betters, beggar's tick often tagged our best store clothes and tumble 
weed through fall winds tumbled dire trouble to our corn and 
potato fields. Sitfast (Ranunculus repens) fought hard for even 
standing room. Mushrooms, lichens, and mosses grew wherever they 
could gain a foothold. Jewel weed, rosin or compass plant, ladies' slip- 
per and ladies' thumb and smocks and tresses all flung their offerings 
at our feet, keeping pace with the seasons. These wonderful floral out- 
bursts of nature repeated before our very eyes the ever present and 
unsolved enigmas of birth, life, death and resurrction as they have 
been repeated year after year and century after century. 
"Our birth at best a sleep and a forgetting, 

The soul that riseth with us, our life's star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar. 

Not in entire forgetfulness 

And not in utter nakedness 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God who is our home." 

The Wild Garden. 

One walled-in meadow was in the main left as a wild garden. 
In it was a diversity of plants and flowers, its boundary 
walls and crevices covered with the purple berried ivy of lusty, 
bushy-headed growth, often by contact so poisonous to humanity 
that because of its searing touch and brilliant hue it might be called 
the trail of the fire serpent, but eaten with impunity and well relished 
by horses and cattle. It was allowed to remain for the sake of its 
glorious golden-red autumn coloring, in contrast with the intense 
fire-red of the woodbine with which it was intertwined and often ran 
races, the goal being the topmost branch of some tall cedar whose green 
background brought out vividly their combined and rarely beautiful 
autumn shades, but any growing near the house was uprooted in 
deference to its malarial reputation as well as its poison blight, in 
fact, poison in leaf and rootlet lurked in woodland and meadow. 
The poison ivy, prickly nettle and pokeweed warred as far and 



MEAT EATING PLANTS 99 

as deeply as inanimates could war against the flesh, but the twin 
guardians, knowledge and care, gave them a losing battle. 

The discovery of a thicket of sweet fern in the meadow, 
(thresholding the smoker's paradise of the farmer boy) gave our 
youngest as great a thrill as the blare of the siren calliope heralding the 
May circus that periodically interfered with spring planting. Here 
the parasitical dodder relentlessly throttles to death the staff which 
aided it to climb upward toward the life-giving sunlight, exactly as 
undeveloped humans shoulder ride and crush their felloius. There 
also flourished the bindweed, the wild morning glory and patches 
of chokeberries. 

Water Plants. 

We lined the banks of the brook that ran through the centre 
of the meadow w T ith iris, flagroot and such other water plants as we 
could collect. Great masses of mint and cress edged its borders 
and in a small pool were grow r n Egyptian lotus and the Victoria Re- 
gia, the largest leaves seemingly strong enough to bear the weight 
of a child. Close by were yellow and red wild lilies, pink marsh- 
mallow, with its delicate and profuse bloom, also grew to perfection, 
and could be seen three fields away. 

Here was the bright orange variety of milkweed as well 
as the silk-podded, which is today being experimented with along 
rubber producing lines, while black alder, dogwood, wild aster and 
Joe-pie-weed made a very thicket of blooms. When man digs deeply, 
he will find the word weed a misnomer. But this meadow was not 
all flowers; in one corner was a patch of horseradish and near the 
wall a surplus row of rhubarb, which in early spring we forced with 
a manure mulch and enclosed within headless and footless barrels. 
From that same State microbiologist we learned how apogamy or 
panthenogenesis of plant life w r as w r ell exampled in the green 
algae that scummed a stagnant pool in a corner of our meadow, and 
could soon classify the interesting forms of oogamous, thallophytic 
plants which grew in abundance in odd corners, on dead stumps and 
in waste places. 

Bogland. 

In one corner of the meadow was a bog; here the stream divided 
and trickled more slowly. A bogless farm may mean better farming, 
but to us it would have meant absence of the cheery peep of the rana, 
and conditions and varieties in plant life that mere money could not 
buy. 

Meat Eating Plants. 

At the edge of the little stream grew two kinds of meat eaters 
— the pitcher, whose victims were inveigled to a watery grave, and 
the hairy, viscous deluged sundews, whose gladsome hand of greet- 
ing swiftly turned to a throttling hand of death. 



100 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

A Double Barreled Plant. 

"When one shot missed, the other hit," was the verdict over 
Lysimachia terrestris as it grew both tubers and seeds on its 
branches. In a dry season it propagated by seeds, in a wet one the 
bulbs which dropped to the ground grew as the seeds rotted. 

Preachers edged the bog, and their red fruit brightened minia- 
ture shaded glades. Scant plant food in the soil meant larger tubers 
and in some plants enlarged branch and rootlet stood for stored up 
sunshine, a sort of plant-reserve-bank, from which to draw sustenance 
in a measure absent from the sphagnum — mossy peat — which abounded 
in our bog. Arrowheads, walking ferns which really walked on 
land, cow lilies, smooth stemmed and leaved plants and sedge and 
bur-reeds glistened 'mid watery surroundings. Brakes spelled aban- 
donment, as attested by luxurious bracken growths in meadows left 
untouched by the ploughshare and death-dealing scythe. 

Batrachians. 

Here we took our first observation lesson of the tailless and 
tailed batrachians, from the near tadpole gill breathing stage to lung 
breathing four legged salamanders. The green frogs of the lily pads 
greened still brighter when herons essayed to "lift them," and the 
brown frog of the woods grew more woodsy still when avoiding 
its enemies — the boy that kept and studied turtles and bees took keen 
pleasure in testing the powers of the changing color frog from Bog- 
land. 

A real floral Jack-and-a-bean-stalk was the Polygonum Sacha- 
liense. Longfellow's first boy poem about Mr. Finney's turnip aptly 
applied to it, as it "grew and grew and grew behind the barn." 
Planted to screen a stercorary, perennial, spreading, and unkillable, 
the yard stick proved that from frost time to May fifth it had 
stalked upward exactly seven feet and tried its best, ere the summer 
waned, to punctuate the soil for a good square rod. Blooming in 
August, its white lacy blossoms — embowered banqueting corridors 
and halls for the bees — wave disdainfully above its lowly mission. 
Spreading roots are its greatest drawback. The historical camel that 
pushed its head within the tent flap was but a novice usurper beside 
Mr. Polygonum Sachaliense, late of Japan. 

Snakes. 

Snakes? Very few, and harmless at that. In twenty years we 
saw but one puff adder. Garter and milk snakes were often found, 
even in the boys' trousers pockets, and an occasional black snake scur- 
ried across our path. I recall abruptly halting one assassin red- 
handed who was gulping down a nestful of young robins. In 
throwing over a stone wall we once found their eggs — a half dozen 



NEVER CLOSED BIRD RESTAURANT 101 

or more clammy, misshapen objects — with the young snakes just 
emerging. In fact, I helped the wriggling mass of snakedom cross 
the threshold of life one moment and, remembering the robin episode, 
in the next assisted its exit, but as vermin exterminators, today they 
are spared. 

More Trees and Shrubs. 

The dark foliage of the Japanese umbrella trees contrasted well 
with the lighter green of a grouped background of umbrella-headed 
catalpas that outlined the "heater piece" where two roadways met. 
Glinting through the silver and green were golden chained labur- 
nums, yellow jessamine, yellow currant, golden yew, golden hop 
tree, golden oak and the long list of yellows that glowed like buttled 
sunshine against the gray of overcast days. 

Japan, that master developer of Dame Nature's products, was 
our stand-by as exampled in lilac and quince, magnolia, sweet-scented 
syringa and delicate blooming deutzia, as well as the golden balled 
kerria, that has been brought to a brighter gold, more closely knit, and 
fuller rounded blossom under the skies of Japan. These and hundreds 
of other plants attest the painstaking propagation of centuries. 

No more attractive shrub blooms in that arboretum than the 
purple-fruited Callicarpa. Close to it was planted the straggling. 
silver leaved Baccharis, and back of the two a noble specimen of Nord- 
man's fir, whose silver-under-sided leaves dance in sunlight. The 
flaming red of the burning bush (the Euonymous or strawberry 
tree, one of the few plants that can squarely face salt water without 
cringing, but whose young life the scale dearly loves to throttle) is 
sandwiched beween flat-branched, hardy orange trees, full of yellowish 
uneatable fruit. Near it in season are the beautiful shell-like blossoms 
of the pearl bush, and forming part of the same background is the 
maiden-hair tree. The luxuriantly growing mulberry, wliose prolific 
crop of fruit resembling the thimbleberry drops before it really ripens; 
the feathery tamarisk from India and Africa; the tropical-looking 
catalpa — Indian bean — whose leaves are late in coming and among 
the first to shrivel with frost, contrast well with a group of golden 
elders, in turn fronting the dark purple foliage of the copper plum, 
the Primus pissardi, and close by it the rose of Sharon, one of the last 
plants to leave and bloom. 

Keyless and Never Closed Bird Restaurant. 

Here grew that shrub of shrubs, the sea buckthorn, Hippophae 
rahmnoides, of striking silver gray foliage, later its stems packed 
with orange colored berries that added many feathered visitors to 
our home bird colony. In one long stretch of the arboretum where 
the stroll path was most heavily screened we made a protected game 
preserve, a real bird paradise; here were planted a wide gamut of 



102 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

berry-bearing shrubs interspersed with a few suet decorated trees and 
bird fonts and in this keyless and never closed bird restaurant the 
bursts of melody were most divine. 

Yonder is a sturdy trumpet vine, holding in its python grip the 
gnarled and barnacled trunk of a dead cherry tree. Bitter- 
sweet and clematis lock arms in the clean-leaved, white flowering 
branches of the fringe tree, at whose base grows the silk tree, while 
near it are the Gymnocladus or Kentucky coffee and nettle 
trees. Backgrounding these are light green feathered larches, in 
front the appropriately named smoke tree, and close by the lurid 
autumn leaved varnish tree, the Kolreuteria, and the rarely planted 
Stuartia, the American camellia or tea plant. 

Silverthorns, hawthorns and thorn-apples a-plenty backed the 
indigo shrub. The flowering almond, fronted by great masses of 
garden pinks, contrasted with the glorious yellow coreopsis, while mock 
orange, bladder nut and New Jersey teas were also in evidence. The 
prostrate cypress and the little English yews stood side by side. Neces- 
sarily, European yews in our young country are small — it takes 
hundreds of years to grow the mightiest and sturdiest, as exampled 
in the eleven hundred year old yew of Ripon Abbey, the epitome of 
strength and longevity. Ours were barely four feet high.* 
"Till fell the frost from clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on 

man.'' 

In spite of the rare beauty of the numberless varieties of golden 
rod that brightened field and hillside, and later the shell-like nodding 
heads of cosmos, a true frost flower, the swirl of feathery chrysan- 
themum, and the late bloom of wistaria and clematis Jackmanni, their 
coming as a near winter harbinger was a cloud over our Garden 
of Eden. 

Try-Out Nursery. 

In the vegetable garden was a try-out nursery where novelties 
were grown. Here were new melons, black sweet corn, a new variety 
of popcorn to gladden and shorten the long winter evenings, gourds 
of bright color and odd form, — one variety in square surface area 
rivaling our prize pumpkin, and scores of other freaks (some of them 
true horticultural pedants) which, though purchased with wonderful 
promises, often failed to live up to the farmer's past stand-bys. I 
recollect, however, some corn stalks sixteen feet high, selected from 
the twenty-acre field, that gained honorable mention at the County 
Fair. We grew sweet potatoes of large size but small flavor, and in 
our own biased opinion graduated many a Nestor in the agricultural 
world, but in time crucible tests often revealed a dunce who flunked 
and slipped into oblivion. Among other fruits was a French straw- 



*The American sequoia outdistances by full two score centuries England's venerable 
yew. Science states there are today living specimens of the California sequoias that were old 
trees before the pyramids were built. 



TRY-OUT NURSERY 103 

berry that ripens in the fall, and has a delicious wild strawberry flavor. 
The crop was larger when we destroyed the June blooms. 

Here also were tested some of the seeds franked to us by our 
Congressman each spring — in fact, the collection of both flower and 
vegetable seeds furnished free by the Government made quite a 
garden. 

Odd hours grew into years of painstaking starch before all these 
plants had been found and named, but they finally stood on the 
record book of the arboretum and lived out their lives in fields, woods, 
copse, hedgerow and meadow, save when the brush fire got beyond 
control, as it sometimes did in spite of the cedar bush beating given 
to keep it within bounds, or the knife of the mower transferred the 
floral harvest of bloom to the hay mow, or the cattle nipped the bud- 
ding blossoms. 

From the green hills of Vermont, at the base of Mt. Mansfield, 
we freighted two large boxes of trailing arbutus, with a goodly 
quantity of the soil in which they grew\ These were planted in a 
grove of Austrian pines, protected from our roving cattle, and it 
was always a joyous discovery to find them peeping through the late 
spring snows. As the seckle is the generally accepted standard of 
flavor in the pear kingdom, the arbutus, "the darling of the forest," 
should be the standard of fragrance in the world of flowers. 

Ere the plant fever developed and before that rural instinct 
dormant in all mankind had become a living thing, the choicest shrubs 
meant to me only a bit of attractive color or graceful form, hence, I 
rarely grew impatient over some city guest's patronizing and flippant 
comment: "Yes, it's beautiful, but isn't it a lot of care?" and five 
minutes after the remark the visitor couldn't recall any detail of that 
which was such an expression of the Divine as to be fit to embower 
the gates of Paradise. My frequent panacea for outraged feelings 
was to lash the offenders unmercifully with a torrent of easily 
acquired botanical names such as Taxodium distichum, or Bambusa 
metake, but I soon reverted to the normal habit of calling an 
Aralia spinosa a Hercules club or a Viburnum plicatum a Japanese 
snowball, realizing that I had in the past been a greater ingrate and 
a grosser culprit than my guest. 

The arboretum required careful planning, but it paid, for, aside 
from the joy of accomplishment, it made a connecting link between 
the house and grounds, giving an air of permanence and completeness 
to the entire development. 

Moving Day. 

Moving day had now arrived for the farm house. "Not good 
enough for this particular site, but very good for some other near by," 
was the verdict of the jury, and horse, block and windlass, roller, 



104 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

plank, and guy moved it a foot at a time over the fourteen hundred 
feet traveled to reach its new homesite. With its removal the sun of 
our twenty year farming day sank beneath the horizon, and man's 
final estate as described in the line, "we shall soon he fogies," began 
to cast faintly outlined shadows the day we gave up the farm. 

Farmers Versus Commuters. 

While raising corn for the silo, we were raising roof-trees for 
the commuter, and in the next hundred pages is a record of how 
we worked out the farm problem into the villa community, made 
easier by the fact that the roads in Hillcrest Manor closely articu- 
lated with various highways; 



HILLTOP 



105 



CHAPTER IV. 

Hilltop— Stony Crest — The Gables — Buexa Vista — Hill- 
crest House — Storm Kixg — Stoxehexge — Sky Rock 
— Briercliff — Croftleigh House — Cliffmoxt — 
Breezemoxt — Ledges — Drachexfels — Island 
House — Cross ways — Red Towers. 

THE first house with which I changed the sky-line of the rough 
Connecticut farm was Hilltop, two large stone chimneys 
its main motif. Hilltop was built before the advent in numbers 
in this country of the skilled Italian stone chimney mason, who. while 
often moving slowly, rarely picks up the wrong stone. I finally 
found a native boss mason willing to tackle the job. The chimneys, 
built of selected lichen-covered stones, both within and without, grew 
fast, and with them the house, of plain but strong design. Three 
large rooms lined toward the south, with the two exterior chimneys 
of held stone equidistant from each end. The stair hall was thrown 
toward the north in a semi-ell, and kitchen in the same manner at 
the other end. connected by a columned, palm-decorated one-story 
corridor. On the second floor bedrooms were all on the south 
and a well ventilated and lishted hall on the north. That roof of roofs 




hilltop. 



106 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



HU-L TOP VIEWS 




HILLTOP FLOOR PLAHS 



Z^] 



! 



p 



HrLLCREST HOUSE FINISHED 




TREELESS AND TREED HILLTOP. 



WHAT CHLOROPHYLL DID IN EIGHT YEARS 107 

■STOHYCRB.5T 




EIGHT YEARS 



TUKK AND SHRUB GROWTH. 



108 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

~~~ : -STOHYCREST 




THE ADDITION TO STONYCREST. 



FLOOR PLANS OF OUR BIST 

HIUXREST HOUSE whst rwos plmi 



109 



■ • \-A 




■ L--r ■{ 



J 



K*> 



r 



,-J i 






AECOfTD FLOOR PLMI 



m 



~i — . 






2E-T 









STOHYCREST 






ml 



-J - ^ 



Ur 



h4jE 



J. 



■n 



■ F 



ih- 



iir~u 






5ECOKB STOEV FLOOR PL. 

or BUENA VISTAB 



THE BIG FOUR. 



110 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



for space, the gambrel, gave large attic rooms. Yes, Hilltop, the 
first modern house in Hillcrest Manor, in presence and convenience 
was called a success. 

Snap Shots of Building Progress. 

Rarely have I built without taking photographs at different 
stages, making important data for future reference. First, the bare 
site, then, in natural sequence, the hole in the ground, the stoned- 
up cellar, upright corner posts, and so on to the completed dwelling, 
and year after year the increased tree and shrub growth, with each 
photograph usually taken in scale with some well known object as 
man, dog, or horse. 




STONYCREST. 



After Hilltop came Stonycrest, whose roof outline formed one 
of its several motifs.* The stone entasis foundation, the big sheets of 
glass from floor to door and window top, windows that occupied 
almost the entire ends of the rooms, and the deeply recessed inglenook 
two steps below the hall with its tiled floor in which was inset a lion 
rampant, were some of its features. 

In the chimney centre was a colored, leaded glass window 
necessitating a double fireplace flue ; had it faced the hills it would 
have been of clear plate glass. Box windows extended up into the 
partitions in low studded rooms, allowing larger view panes. 



*The original plan called for an arched corridor, connecting stable and house, as shown 
on page 108. 



UTILIZING STONE WALLS 



111 





\ Mi > 



^,.= DETAILS IN. THE- 

^tf *?y!i& ' I wrtwimc, of STONY CKEST 



DETAILS IX 'I'll!': BUILDING OF STONYCREST 



112 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




IT GKSW OUT O? THE aiFT ^ ^j^^JTviSTAB. 



THE HOUSE THAT SPANNED A CITY BLOCK. 



PRETENTION OF VERANDA DECAY 



113 



Translucent glass formed the risers in outside steps as well as 
back stair flight, flooding the basement and cellar with light, an 
excusable bit of commercialism. Heavy twenty-four inch fluted 
columns flanked the entrance hall on either side, and still other 
features were a niched window on the stairs, the great south plant 
window with curved top transom of stained leaded glass, and oaken 
carved griffins — a copy of those designed by Richardson for the library 
building in Burlington, Vermont — ornamenting the front door lintel. 

But the prevailing exterior motif was the roof, that with curve 
and mitred soffit, peak and dormers, tried both purse and patience. 
As I remember it, six carpenters worked six weeks to close in and 
finish that roof in all its details, but it was generally conceded to be 
a thing of beauty. 

The entrance posts built of big boulders were capped by rough 
stone laid in basket form for flowering plants, and fitted with gal- 
vanized iron drainage pipes.* 

Prevention of Veranda Decay. 

To dispose of rain water on the piazza a strip of ten-inch-cop- 
per flashing fastened with copper nails at the edge of piazza floor, 
formed a slightly inclined gutter, its outer edge cemented into 
the stone veranda rail as the stone was being laid up and connected 
with spouts leading into blind drains. This prevented decay in floor 
and beams and solved the annoying veranda water-drip problem when 
the veranda abuts against a solid stone railing. The bulkhead cellar 
doors of wired glass were screened and protected from uncontrolled 
grass or brush fires by plant-decorated ramparts of rustic-laid-up 
stones. Twice we lost valuable buildings through burnings-over care- 
lesslv handled. 




THE GABL.ES. 



: Nine hundred doHars was the cost of the posts and short fences which joined them and 
in three years low evergreens and vines completely concealed their contour:. Cheap but sub- 
stantial boulder posts screened with vines would have answered as well. 



114 



HOir TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




A WIDE RANGE IN FARM LIFE. 



LEAF-ROOFED VERANDA CEILING 115 

A short thousand feet, and we stand on the wide veranda of 
a lonjz, low villa. "The Gables" featured a dozen outside balconies. 
Hall, parlor and dining room were on the ground floor as well 
as the kitchen extension which joined the dining room by a long 
butler's pantry. ^ es, it was winged, and its isolation meant freedom 
from clatter, he;*, and odors. Overhead were servants' rooms, bath, 
house-maids' sink room, etc., and laundry and cellar beneath. 

The second floor had many connecting rooms, and increased area 
was obtained by building the front line of the house over the fifteen 
foot veranda, all overhang being thoroughly deadened. 

Third floor rooms were made unusually cool by the high studded 
loft with three ventilating windows hinged from the bottom to keep 
out rain. These opened inward, were chain-hung at top and proved 
practical ventilators. 

Leaf-Roofed Veranda Ceiling. 

The ampelopsis has taken possession of the veranda ceiling, 
and one sits beneath a leafy canopy, while English ivy keeps the north 
stone posts green all the year. As the ceiling boards will last at 
least ten years and possibly twenty and can then be renewed, the 
unique beauty of this verdure-bowered ceiling made the doing worth 
while. Occasional sprinkling with insecticide downed fly, mosquito 
and spider. An improvement would be an indestructible cement 
ceiling. 

All balconies are well flashed, canvas-covered and thor- 
oughly painted. Door sills are sharply sloped and have triple rab- 
bets. A poorly built balcony invariably leaks and is a large factor 
in falling ceilings and stained walls, and window frames about caps 
and sills need special flashing and close jointure. 

Open and roofed verandas extend on four sides of The Gables, 
and include a servants' porch broad enough for an outdoor dining 
room at the rear of the house, well screened from the front entrance. 

In Gables we succumbed to the arguments of the wall- 
paper salesman, only to find that sand-finished walls intended for 
paint or muresco and stencil treatment rebel when papered. Fall 
winds sweeping through open doors and windows stripped off roses, 
pansies, and nasturtiums by the yard. 

Buena Vista. 

Here is shown Buena Vista, which, with its length of 228 feet, 
stretches a full city block. It is built to fit the contour of the ground. 
When I first bought the farm and named it Hillcrest, I walked out 
on these ledges and planned to sometime tie the lichen-covered stone 
outcroppings together with a Moorish castle. After years of wait- 



116 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



BUEHA VISTAS 




SOUTH AMD "WE5T TROUT 




THE NORTH FRONT 



THE MOORISH C4STLE. 



THAT SIREN INFECTED ORCHARD 117 







THIS IS OUR I*OR£.Sr PRIMEVAL 
THAT ROOF. 



118 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



ing and a score of months of continuous labor the castle, with stucco 
sides, and roof and towers of tile, at last crowned the hill, welcoming 
guests and owner through archway, up the broad stairway, and into 
its hospitable halls. Extravagance in paneled wainscot and beamed 
ceiling ran riot, as in leaded lights, arch-windowed turrets, and the 
copper-flashed, tiled roof, viewed from the lookout of which Buena 
Vista seemed like a miniature city. 




BUENA VISTA. 



I believe that Tennyson, with his love for tile, as against 
"slated ugliness," would have appreciated that roof, though it will 
be decades before it takes on its northern slope the moss-grown 
shades that pleased the poet. One can, of course, use tile in much 
less glaring colors, and in so doing span a century. 

In Buena Vista were picture windows so large and heavy that 
they could not be conveniently opened, a remembered lesson to me. 
When I again tackled 8x8 foot picture windows they swung on pivots 
inserted in top and bottom or on either side. Fortunately, windows 
were so numerous in Buena Vista that stagnant air was unknown. 

Hardware in the reception room was gold plated ; this was not 
extravagant and never needed polishing. 

Yes, it's a scrawny, uninteresting apple orchard, but you will 
see how in landscaping the east side of Hillcrest House, I used these 
old apple trees as a foil to the big building. 



THE STONE FRAMED MOORISH CASTLE 119 




THE BAST ET1TRAHCE 



A STONE FRA.MKH LANDSCAPE 



120 



HO W TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



The Siren in the Apple Blossom. 

The amateur farmer greets an apple orchard with open arms, 
looking upon it as the sure means of paying the hired man, possibly 
carrying part of the interest on the bank mortgage, and giving a severe 
drubbing to the wolf that stands ever at the door of man's domicile. 
His dream of a home embowered in apple blossoms gives him patience 
and courage to put up with the old house a while longer, 
and tends to dissipate the occasional depression caused by muddy roads, 
delayed trains, the unreason of farm help, and the myriad difficulties 
that daily dog the steps of him who, if undeveloped, cannot throttle 
disappointment or rise above vexatious surroundings. So the apple- 




THE SITE OF HILLCREST HOUSE 
AS IT LOOKED BEFORE WE DUG THE CELLAR 

blossom-dream lures him on until he awakens to realize that apple 
blossoms last but one week of the fifty-two, that insects and fungi 
blight and disfigure, that a lawn is impossible, as grass grows 
unevenly and sparsely under the wide-spreading branches of apple 
trees whose trunks often angle most ungracefully, and that gener- 
ally both view and breeze are shut out by their intertwined branches. 
In a word, if house and grounds are to be made attractive to the 
owner, the axe must be his best friend. Apple trees out of place 
are an aggravation, but it takes more courage to obviate the difficulty 
than was shown by "The Little Minister," who, spite of the fact 



KIXGSHIP OF LIVING 



121 



that the nearness (it the cherry tree to his house menaced both health 
and comfort, followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, the old 
curate, and "never could find the axe." 




HILLCREST HOUSE. 



Hillcrest Hall and the Kingship of Living. 

It's a long stride from the base of Hillcrest House to the lookout 
that crowns its ridge, from which is an extended view of land and 
sea. Truly one feels the kingship of living more keenly from 
house or mountain top, and even in lowly cabin instinctively searches 
for a place on the roof from which to breathe air that does not hug 
too closely the dusty highway. 

A rare building was the big house. The oaken staircase of 
steamer stair design had a wide single flight to a landing lighted by a 
broad window of Tiffany stained glass, then divided into two separ- 
ate flights. Stair rail was in keeping with the oak paneled hall, 
while string piece and balustrade were ornamented with metal beading. 

The dining room, 20 x 30 feet, with doors at either end, led on 
the east to a tiled and fountained court and on the west to a 
conservatory. The ebonized antique oak trim increased its apparent 
size, especially as main windows were at each end. 

The butler's pantry was 8x25 feet, and stairs therefrom led 
to the servants' suites in the ell. 

Drawing room was in bird's-eye maple, with stained glass 
leaded transoms in the broad-seated bay, representing the four seasons 



122 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

of an apple orchard; blossoming tree, half-grown fruit, matured 
apple crop, and snow-laden boughs. Mantel face and hearth were 
onyx with shelf supported by ormolu or mosaic gold brackets and 
lower half of the broad window opening on veranda, next to a side 
door screened with translucent leaded glass. 

Hillcrest Hall towered four stories, and required a plot of land 
more than one hundred by two hundred and twenty-five feet to com- 
pass its angles and curves. There were at least two hundred win- 
dows. It represented both joy and worry in large measure, and I 
grayed a bit during its building. 

Fireproof Den. 

Adjoining the library was a fireproof den of iron, brick, and 
cement, with two air-spaced metal doors, iron shuttered and barred 
windows, and a wide fireplace. Under this den was a large stone 
walled room, its sides lined with asbestos covered metal shelves, 
making an ideal filing room with fireplace ventilation. 

On the second floor were the usual half dozen bathrooms, tiled 
to the ceiling, and masters' bedrooms, both with and without bal- 
conies, dressing rooms with mirror doors, and everywhere a super- 
abundance of large closets. 

The billiard room windows on the third floor overlooked thirty 
miles of Sound and country. Wall decorations were pictures of hunt- 
ing, yachting, fencing, and other sports. 

Pistol Gallery. 

Here was a Japanese room with lanterned, divaned and draped 
cosy corner, and leading therefrom a well ventilated pistol gallery, 
where bullets harmlessly impinged against the massive stone chimney 
breast. In the centre of this long corridor-like room stood a rowing 
machine. 

A large linen and a cedar closet, the former having two full 
sized doors, completed this story. 

On the fourth floor were housed the personal attendants of 
guests, distinct from house servants' quarters in the kitchen ell. 

Gym. in the Open. 

Over the arched and gargoyled porte cochere, screened by 
window boxes filled in summer with flowering plants and in winter 
with evergreens pruned in curves, is an outdoor canvas-floored gym- 
nasium, equipped with trapeze, punching bags and other parapher- 
nalia to be used for that few moments' morning exercise in the open 
that fills the lungs, develops the muscles, straightens the form, and 



OX THE STOCKS 



123 




A PRIMITIVE LABOR SAVER 



BUILDING THE ARCH 




EACH STEP AI1D 
CAP A SINGLE STONE 



THE BOLD BAUD SITE 
RUGGED STONE WORK. 



124 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

makes the blood surge and tingle, putting one in fine fettle for 
wrestling with the day's work. 

The Rest Room. 

Over the coachman's nook on the same floor is a writing or rest 
room with fireplace, reached from the house by the pergolad outdoor 
gym., a place to pull tired nerves into alignment, a room theoretically 
a luxury, but in reality a necessity. 

Porte Cochere Fireplace. 

Supporting the portals of Hillcrest House were grouped a half 
score of massive stone arches, framing a broad porch room, as shown 
in the accompanying photographs, from which a large area of 
countryside is visible. At the outer side of the porte cochere was 
built a high arched inglenook with a six foot wide stone fireplace, stone 
settles and recessed windows, intended as a waiting shelter for those 
who serve. Folk-lore has it that during the Revolution the Father 
of our Country was concealed over night in a cave less than three 
miles across lots from Hillcrest Manor. Whether the statement is 
true or false, its underlying sentiment coupled with our require- 
ments caused us to transport by a double yoke of cattle a flat 
stone from the mouth of this cave to the fireplace-ingle in the 
coachman's nook, where today it serves as a settle as it may have 
served our first president. 

Hero of New England's Dark Day. 

We are on historic ground, for on the slope of the hill 
yonder lived Abraham Davenport, that hero who, when New Eng- 
land's dark day to the Puritan mind threatened the wrath of God, 
rose amid his trembling fellow legislators in the council hall at Hart- 
ford and in the words of New England's poet of the hills said : 

" 'Let God do His work, we will do ours; 
Bring in the candles.' .... 
A witness to the ages as they pass 
That simple duty has no place for fear." 

Putnam's Ride. 

Across the valley we see Put's Hill, down which General Israel 
Putnam was pictured in our school books as recklessly urging his 
galloping steed while the pursuing English halted at the edge 
of the steep declivity. In the foreground is the plain 'cross which he 
dashed to safety, while just west of the hill is the stone chimney of 
the inn where he was eating when interrupted by his unwelcome 
callers. We are also but a short mile from Fort Nonsense, thrown 
up by the same rash and impetuous Putnam in face of querulous criti- 
cism on account of its useless location. 



GARDENS OF HILLCREST HUI'SE 125 



GARDENS i HILLCREST HOUSE 



1 




„ .- w^^^nlm i i*aii 




WELL-IfPUSE, PERGOLA AND GREENHOUSE. 



126 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




SQUARING THE'snXS OF HUXCREST HOUSE H»Mm& THE VEHKOBA ROOF 




(Second Jc 






THE BUILDING OF THE BIG HOUSE. 
From Foundation Upward. 



sToxr: .ixn hood skeletons 



127 




ARCH AND ARCH AND ARCH. 



128 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE HEW EHTRNICE looking south 




THE 5AME ET1TRANCB mwnTEP fjt wot m discowtejit 

THE ENTRANCE TO HILLCREST FARM AND MANOR. 



BARE GROUND TO DENSE FOLIAGE 



129 



The House of the Cross. 

The cross was used as a motif in the building of Storm King, 
the roof of the porte cochere extending far enough beyond the house 
to form an outdoor lounging room, or ombra, entirely separate from 
the main building which is planned to throw the four wings of the 
cross into one large fountain-centred room. The manner of lighting 
the third story rooms with side sliding windows under the wide over- 
hang left an unbroken roof line, much to the joy of any architect 
visitor, though it circumscribed the view. The clapboards with which 
Storm King is sided were mitred instead of abutting against a corner 
board. 

Pompeiian Fountain 

Under the porte cochere and against the side of the ombra was 
placed a counterpart of one of the drinking fountains unearthed 
at Pompeii, in which one sees the depression worn in the stone two 
thousand years ago by the hand of the passer-by as he leaned against it 
while slaking his thirst. 

In the tower a broad winding stairway followed the circu- 
lar sides to the top, a somewhat difficult piece of work, especially the 
hand rail. 




STORM KING. 

Crowning a high ridge, its broad measurements and outlying 
wings making it stolidly indifferent to storms that rack and even 
rock the ordinary house, Storm King appeared as firm as its impreg- 
nable foundation, save when a severe thunder storm vibrated the 
granite ledges. 

The Cromlech Stone. 

Directly opposite Storm King is Stonehenge, that seems to grow 
from the ledge. Centreing the lawn is a rough bouldered flat-topped 
stone similar to those strange altars that once served for Druidical 



130 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

rites and sacrifices that make us moderns shudder at the horrible 
unaccountable cruelty of forbears — thank God — ages removed. The 
big arched entrance is half barricaded by a low, stone-capped wall, 
leaving ample space to enter the vestibule behind it, the design 
filched from Phillips Brooks' house in Boston. Overhead high stained 
glass windows are framed in the stones. Opening a heavy oak- 
battened, iron-studded door, one enters a small but lofty vaulted 
hall. The dining room is on the same level. It is sixteen feet to the 
beamed ceiling formed by the second story 4x12 surfaced floor tim- 
bers. This manner of making a beamed ceiling demands air spacing 
and very thick deadening to eliminate overhead noise. 




STONEHENGE. 

Dining Room on New Lines. 

Few houses at twice the cost have as fine a dining room as "Stone- 
henge," whose high ceiling admits of the adjoining space being 
cut into two seven-foot rooms on different levels. One of these leading 
from the dining room forms a cosy inglenook, its red leather trimmed 
settles built each side the fireplace standing out in baronial richness 
against the ebonized wood. The other adjoining room is the butler's 
pantry and over both a mezzanine floor, making an ideal den but 
necessarily with a low seven-foot ceiling. 

On the south side of the dining room French windows open- 
ing to the floor lead to a sheltered outdoor breakfast room 
and semi-conservatory. On the west over the low broad ebonized 
sideboard are especially designed leaded windows through which 
streams vari-colored light, while on the east is a doorway of the 
unusual height of fourteen feet, tapestry draped, giving com- 
manding presence ; in fact, any room rightly located is made impres- 
sive without extra cost by an unusually high portiered doorway. 



DINING ROOM ON NEW LINES 

BRIERCLIFF 



FROM ALL SlDBS AND IN ALL 6EASONS 



131 




BRIER CLIFF FROM ALL POINTS. 



132 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

In the side wall to the left of hall entrance is a projecting 
oriel window connecting library and dining room, and on the north, 
as we have seen, over inglenook and butler's pantry, the little 
den whose swinging casements of leaded glass open near ceiling height 
into the dining room. 

Sky Rock. 

Just beyond Stonehenge and northwest of Storm King stands 
Sky Rock. Its high cliff foundations and turreted outline silhouetted 
'gainst the sky line make it true to name, fitting the cragged site as a 
long low building fits a plain. 

The veranda view compasses a wildness of forest and ravine that 
belong to a wilderness rather than to a property within one hour 
of New York City. From the roof lookout is an unobstructed 
horizon view. 

A desirable motif for a country house is a ten-foot wide fireplace 
opening as seen in Sky Rock. The entrance hall is 20x30 feet, with 
dining room a close second in size. One side of the latter is bayed, 
overlooking forest and valley, through which winds a silver-threaded 
river, merging into the waters of Long Island Sound. In the distance 
are the blue-hazed sand banks of Oyster Bay. 

Settle in Stone Ledge. 

A broad entrance porch fronts the cliff on the west. In it 
is a settle cut in the stone ledge on which Sky Rock is built. Cement 
steps from the porch lead upward to an iron-banded-donjon 
gate. Foot pressure on either metal door mat or old fashioned 
scraper starts the clanging of a gong that doubtless in feudal times 
called many a doughty warrior to don gasket and breastplate to repel 
invaders, but today answering that summons, the gate swings 
wide to greet the arriving guest, who steps into an ideal porch 
room, one of the half dozen motifs that inspired the building 
of Sky Rock. The marquise is formed by a curved extension of the 
platform of the porch room, which is about 25x30 feet. Densely 
headed rock maples and tall walnuts bar the western sun. 

Domed Hall. 

From the porch a wide Colonial door opens to the living room 
from which in turn three steps lead to a broad stair landing, holding 
a piano, a couch and a couple of chairs. On the west side of this 
landing are two long leaded windows, each four by twelve feet, 
while directly opposite is a stairway six feet in width leading to a 
second story, circular, vaulted hall twelve feet in diameter with coved 
ceiling, centreing in a dome of colored glass. Inset in the floor above is 
a sheet of translucent, extra heavy, floor wire glass. This entrance hall 
is pierced by six doors and connects with a nine foot wide galleried 



A ROUND DINING ROOM 



133 



hall with barreled ceiling. Opening therefrom are the sleeping rooms. 
The halls are unusual, hut considered a success, and form one of the 
motifs of Sky Rock. 

A basement and first story conservatory and fountain for the 
southeast corner I never built. Leading from the Living room and 
wide veranda, they would form a feature well worth adding. 

( )n the south wall was placed a motto-circled sun dial. 




BRIER CLIFF. 

Here is "Brier Cliff," riveted so closely to the ledge as to seem 
part of it. The veranda built on three sides narrows under the porte 
cochere on the front and extends to a belvedere on the west. 

A Round Dining Room.* 

Brier Cliff has stone fireplaces, French windows and balconies 
on three stories, and a circular dining room, with curved bay on the 
west, opening to the veranda, while the duplicate bay on the east 
has two mirror doors, reflecting the woods and the ravine gorge 
through which plunges the river, whose swirling current has worn 
its way deep into the rock. The steep sides of the ravine are held in 
place by lofty evergreens, tall walnuts and enormous boulders, some 
of which make caves within the rough-edged, lichen-covered ledges, 
while others are strewn in wild confusion along the rugged side> and 
in the river bed, forming what we called Ausable Chasm, Junior. It's 
a wild forest scene from the west veranda of Brier Cliff. 

Nearly all rooms are corner rooms, with broad vistas from every 
window. The centre space in the attic is used as a billiard 
hall, with balconies built over the valley. There are large rooms at 
either end. Climbing still another stairway, one enters the tower 
lookout, commanding the horizon on all sides. North, south, and 
east are landscaped villas, while on the west is a forest wulderness. 

In another house an elliptic dining room gave better proportions, the waste corners 
utilized in adjoining room and hall as closets 



134 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



The Crow's Nest in the Hemlock. 

On the ravine side is a firmly built platform half way up the 
trunk of a big hemlock, reached by a railed step-ladder, forming a 
veritable crow's nest among the feathery boughs. Here the tune of 
the hemlock's faithful branches, "green not alone in summer time, 
but in the winter frost and rime" brings rest and inspiration. 

Croftleigh House with its Galleried Veranda. 

A few steps from Brier Cliff stands one of the most enjoyable 
houses in Hillcrest Manor. Croftleigh House has two pronounced 




CROFTLEIGH HOUSE. 

motifs that at once stamp it as out of the ordinary. One is the 
galleried veranda, projecting about sixty feet from the southwest 
corner of the house, and ending in a big porch room supported by 
stone posts. This room overlooks the same charming valley, threaded 
by the same silver stream, its beauty and utility greatly enhanced by 
separation from the house, standing as it does so that breezes reach 
it from all sides. Still farther away one sees the Sound and the sand 
bluffs of Long Island. 

Feature Levels. 

The second and interior motif is a combination of rooms at slight- 
ly different levels. North of the entrance hall three steps lead down- 
ward to the dining room and three steps under the large stair-land- 
ing bring one to the rear hall door leading to the east veranda. Open- 
ing this and the front door ventilates the entire house. 

Hall, dining room and stairs are Colonial, with white enamel 
finish ; the stair rail of mahogany. The broad landing with curved 
front holds a piano and a grandfather's clock, and over it is a three 



THE IDEAL SUITE 



135 



sectioned, leaded, bayed window with arched head, to ceiling height, 
its delicate tracery of design showing through lacy curtains that 
break the glare of the eastern sun. 

On the north side of the dining room, midway between floor and 
ceiling, leaded casements light the little den reached from a 
back stair landing practically in the same way as in Stonehenge, 
making a wide musicians' balcony. Over the dining room mantel, 
high in the brick chimney, is a niche with leaded design in clear glass, 
where rare bric-a-brac can be displayed. 

The Ideal Suite. 

Croftleigh had one especially large double bedroom with five 
exclamation points — exclamations synonyming view, size, glorious 
sunshine, air, and acme of comfort. When visitors crossed its thresh- 
old, it was only a question which point was voiced loudest or first. 
This room extended the entire width of the house — some fifty-five feet 
— and faced the south, with an horizon view of hill, vale, meadow, 
and Long Island Sound, fringed in the distance by the sand bluffs 
of Oyster Bay. The eastern outlook embraced vineyards, orchards, 
sloping hillside, flower and vegetable garden, field and pasture land, 
and the details of husbandry that make for joy as well as utility in 
country living, while on the west, barring a couple of extensive 
country homes, lay a wilderness of forest and stream, with broad 
vistas beyond. 

In the boudoir portion of this ideal room, separated by grille and 
column from the main room, was a generous fireplace. The bedroom 
end connected with a completely appointed tiled bathroom and a 
sleeping porch 8x 15 faced the southwest. The fourth compass point 
was compassed by a projecting bay. 





i^pnr 



CLIFFM< 'XT. 



136 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




CLIFFMOnT 



FE\MIMG AMD FINISHING 






SHAPING UP SQUARED UGLINESS. 



OUTLOOK FROM THE FARM 



137 




HILL#REST AND ONE NEAR NEIGHBOR. 



138 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



One of the motifs of Cliffmont, whose grounds join those of 
Brier Cliff, is the outdoor dining room reached through the living 
room, and well shaded by trees. The railed platform on which 
it is built is protected by an awning and forms the roof of the 
garage. Cliffmont boasts an exceptionally large lookout. 

The stairs climb upward at the back of the chimney from the 
living room, and are side-settled at newel post. 

In Cliffmont, as in several of the other houses, a boudoir suite, 
with its connecting rooms which make ideal living, occupies the entire 
south front of the second story, with south, east, and west windows. 
In the sitting room end, which is separated by columns, is a fireplace 
and inglenook, settled and grilled. A connecting bathroom forms the 
third member of the suite. 




BREEZEMONT. 



Misleading 20 x 30 foot Rooms. 

Breezemont in plan and location justifies its name. It has one 
of the 20x30 foot living rooms that I have frequently built, but 
no two of which looked the same size, owing to difference in height, 
location, style, decoration and furnishing, which if arranged with 
"malice aforethought" can he made to increase the apparent size of a 
room twenty-five per cent. 

Balconies, windows and well-lighted bedrooms are among the 
features of Breezemont, the largest bedroom facing all points of the 
compass by means of a windowed alcove. 

Tree Basket Nest. 

A big buttonwood tree grows through the centre of the veranda 
floor, and high in its branches is chain-hung a strongly framed, wire 
basket-nest large enough for a children's playhouse. 



MISLEADING 20 x 30 FOOT ROOMS 
'. . BRBfcZBMOHT 



139 




PROM OUTLINE TO FINISH. 



140 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Ledges, an English house built around a 12 x 12 foot stone 
chimney stack, with quaint stair tower, big arched and stone-settled 
fireplaces, beamed ceilings and timbered and stuccoed interior as well 
as exterior walls, is unusual, perched on a cliff overlooking a steep, 
wooded incline, fretted at its base by rock-strewn rapids of the swirl- 
ing river. 



i 


1 IM W: 1 1 T 






wn* lamina- 


ffl 




*n mi 


— 


< 




"^^^B*; .<■■:>' 


- ; ■'! - ,:....■.- 



LEDGES. 

Norman Tower. 

In Norman tower are set the slit windows of mediaeval times, 
through which feudal lords and their retainers repelled with javelin 
and bow-gun invading hordes. 

Before speeding northward to Drachenfels, that house of mighty 
spaces built in the centre of a rare, Long Island Sound-bordered 
woodland, and ere we leave the undulating meadows and pic- 
turesque wooded knolls of Hillcrest Manor, we will bid adieu to 
the patriarch of this group, the old farm house that stood there 
before swamps were reclaimed and the wilderness of bramble and 
brier made to blossom as the rose; when the arable land was simply 
potato patches, corn, and hay fields instead of orchards, vineyards, 
Colonial and Italian gardens, and country villas. 

In the houses in Hillcrest Manor I tested various modes of con- 
struction ; a log slabbed building ; an odd design in roofing tile ; stucco 
in its varied forms, plastered on either wooden or steel lathing ; laying 
clapboards rough side out and staining as we do shingles; siding 
with lapped white wood boards twelve inches wide, mitred at the cor- 
ners ; belting side walls with shingle laths over clapboards; shingles 



A NORMAN TOWER 



141 




WHEKK SOME OF THE STONE WALLS LANDED. 



142 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



laid with different weatherage, seven coursed shingle roofs lapped in 
curves to imitate thatch ; tile-hipped and tile-ridged shingle roofs, 
and a half height shingled veranda rail, topped with low wooden 
paling; novelty siding on outbuildings or battens with one side nail- 
ing and slip joint to prevent splitting, as well as blocked cement, 
hollow brick and terra cotta construction and veneered air-spaced 
brick, tearing out again where the effect failed in harmony and the 
result was unsatisfactory. 

During these building years we turned nature topsy-turvy — 
at least, so said the farmer's sons who, after a twenty-year absence, 
revisited their birthplace. 

The Adirondacks at the City's Threshold. 

Within an hour's drive or a fifteen minutes' motor trip from 
Hillcrest Manor, a rough, wooded tract edges on one side a small 
lake, on the other the Sound. Through this tract was built a 
winding road, fringed by white oak, chestnut, cedar, hemlock, birch 
and beech, leading to the Sound. It is like a bit of the Adirondacks 
at the city's threshold and includes two verdure-crowned, rock-edged 
islands, deep ravines and wooded knolls, through which wind two 
miles of roadway. Here we built Drachenfels. 




DRACHENFELS. 

The house itself is baronial in appointments and decorations. 
A steep driveway leads to a porte cochere on the east. The oaken 
door is six feet wide, with heavy iron hinges and a knocker from an 
ancient castle on the Rhine. Stepping through the doorway, one 
stands in a beamed and columned hall of 20 x 40 feet, with a thirteen 
foot ceiling. The twelve foot wide mahogany staircase flanked by 



ADIROXDACKS AT THE CITY'S THRESHOLD 143 



DRACHENFELS 




HOWE TRANSFORMED DULL 
nORTH LIGHT TO SUNLIGHT 







• 


if 






• 




■rr- • — J 


1 


>"'•'"' & ■ 


mffi 


T tj 



THE WINDOW E.XACTLY SIXTEEN 

feet souape on THE STAIR 
LANDING 




THE, WINDING STAIR. 



MANORLAL AND IN SOME FEATURES BARONIAL. 



144 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Ionic columns leads to a stair landing twenty feet in length with a 
ceiling forty feet high, wainscoted and settled, in whose wall is a 
sixteen foot square concave window of green and golden leaded glass, 
colors which swing the compass from north to south. Its form 
makes it appear six feet higher than its width, a point we remem- 
bered in building other concave windows. A broad columned 
entrance hall opens on the west to a veranda twenty feet wide. 

The Colonial dining room, 20 x 30 has wide columned alcove 
window and mahogany beamed ceiling. 

All mantels are high, wide, and deep ; one marble, others 
mahogany, gilded wood, or white enamel finish in keeping with the 
rooms. 

French windows open from parlor to porch, showing in their 
curved muntins a touch of Versailles. The veranda has an excep- 
tionally low stone rail, increased to normal height by boxes of 
plants. Posts are unusual, as seen in the photograph, with tops 
broader than bases — seemingly too slender at the bottom, but for the 
enlarging stone support which is a foot or two above the low 
stone rail. They are of chestnut plank built about a heavy chestnut 
centre, the forty-two members of each post-shell held together as hard 
and fast as iron can band them. 

A Trussed Transom. 

Twin picture windows of one sheet of plate glass at the west 
end of both the long parlor and library are each nine feet wide and 
six feet high. A thirteen foot ceiling allows of leaded light transoms, 
but the wooden parting strip is barely two inches wide, and when 
they were first placed a gale threatened to dash the whole front to 
the floor. The problem was solved with a two-inch truss-iron 
set edgewise laid closely against each side of the lock-rail its full 
length within and without. It could not be beaten in with a 
sledge hammer as far as the parting strip is concerned. The library 
has mahogany book-cases, high columned mantel, wide window 
settles, and a big observatory window with leaded transom. 

Under the stair landing is a butler's pantry with three divi- 
sioned sink of planished copper to avoid dish breaking. It extends 
the length of the three windows, which thoroughly light this impor- 
tant room. 

An easy flight of basement stairs brings us to the tarred and 
cemented cellar blasted from the ledge. It is and has always 
been a stranger to moisture, except as the area entrance was flooded 
before we bricked and drained it, and built an overhead wire-glass, 
light giving bulkhead roof that shoots the water where it belongs, into 
cobbled gutter and thence to flower garden and lawn. The stone 
walled basement extends under the entire house, and contains kitchen, 



SWINGING THE COMPASS 



145 




THE TWELVE FOOT WIDE STAIR 



THE TWELVE FOOT STAIR. 



146 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

laundry, man's room, refrigerator and storerooms, shower room for 
the athlete, tool room and billiard room, the latter with arched and 
settled stone fireplace that would rouse to the joy of living the most 
phlegmatic and pessimistic skeptic or indifferent stupid tyke. 

Returning to the first floor, one passes under the big cement- 
sheathed and terra cotta fire-protected steel I-beams that stiffen 
the house immensely and carry the north side of the hall, and 
climbs the broad stairs to the 20 x 40 foot second story hall, which, 
wainscoted and beamed, forms a vaulted room from which tran- 
somed French windows lead to the west balcony. 

In the forty-foot staircase tower, half way to the third floor the 
flight is broken by a projecting mahogany railed balcony which seems 
suspended in mid-air. The stair turns and lands between columns 
on the third floor, where are rooms and baths for guests. 

There is a fourth floor for servants and above that the lookout. 

All bathrooms are tiled, fixtures of the best, properly back-aired, 
and with chimney ventilation. 

Hanging Balcony. 

Scant head room under the curved balcony leading to the third 
floor prevented the use of twelve inch wooden girders. Instead of 
the ugly chain-hung-from-ceiling method, two pieces of heavy iron 
trolley rail placed through double walls — one a closet wall — and 
fastened thoroughly by braces, gave a fine holding purchase. On this 
the balcony was built, and it is as solid as the proverbial meat axe. 

Drachenfels has a boulder stone foundation, sides of stucco pan- 
eled with chestnut timbers, and roof of stain-dipped shingles. (It 
should have been of slate or tile.) Plate glass is used in all lower, 
and clear leaded glass in all upper windows, except twenty or more 
which are of stained glass. There are balconies from bedrooms and 
balconies from halls, their floors canvas covered ; window seats boxed 
full length for dresses, many windows columned, and with suitably 
colored leaded light, specially designed stained glass transoms for 
halls, dining room, library, parlor and bedrooms, and hard wood floors 
throughout the house, some with parquetry borders, but avoiding 
sharp color contrast which tends to curtail the size of a room. 

Twin Chimneys. 

The chimneys of Drachenfels are stone, and one of its chief 
motifs is shown in the twin chimneys, one at either side of the amber- 
hued 16x16 foot leaded north window. Indeed, Drachenfels fairly 
teems with motifs. The first floor, each room of which has broad 
sliding doors, converting the large area into one room at will ; the 
twelve foot wide stairway, the stair hall alcove with its forty foot 
height and striking leaded windows, and the mid-air balcony are all 
well worth working out. 



A POST WIDER AT TOP THAN BOTTOM 147 



DRACHEMFELS 



^0 FOOT WIDE VERANDA 





A POST VOIDER AT TOP THAN 



A TWKXTY FOOT Y K I ;.\ X I 'A. 



148 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




TH£ SOUTH TROUT 



THE HOUSE WHICH EDGED A FOREST. 



BUILDIXc; OF CROSSTVAYS 



149 




that twelve foot wide staircase. 

THE LAWNS OF DRACHENFELS. 



150 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



The Crater Garden. 

Grounds are arboretum-edged, while on the lawns are grouped 
choice and desirable shrubs and trees, and there is a rare Druid- 
ical garden, into the centre of which was dragged, by that 
double yoke of cattle, a ponderous, representative Cromlech stone. 
This garden outlines a miniature Monte Nuova crater like that 
just outside of Naples. Standing on its edge, one looks down at a 
varied mass of flowering shrubs and plants. The winding paths are 
bordered by old-fashioned box, while lily, eglantine and honeysuckle 
perfume the air and brilliant blossoms carpet the ground. This 
wonderful little basin was of nature's fashioning; man simply in- 
tensified its beauty by rearrangement and planting. In some ways 
it outclassed an Italian formal earden. 




ISLAND HOUSE. 

Passing through the depth of the forest that surrounds Drachen- 
fels, as shown in the accompanying picture, in a spot where time and 
again the Indian pitched his wigwam, stands Island House. When 
one crossed the causeway, flashing in view, it seemed like a 
new discovery, so hidden by foliage and rocky cliff was this ideal semi- 
bungalow with the big living room and stone fireplace, stairway hid- 
den behind the chimney, wide veranda, and upper balconies over- 
looking the water. The veranda posts rustic, the house itself attractive 
and homelike, it is the best example I know of a thoroughly con- 
structed, plastered and finished house built in ten weeks. There are 
ten rooms of good size, and it cost exactly $3,000. A pokehole 
head hitting cellar was the one drawback and a needless error. 

Two miles 'cross country, at the meeting of the ways, stands 
Crossways. With that broad towering exterior stone chimnev, it fits 



THE CRATER GARDEN 



151 




DOGS AND THEIR MASTERS. 



152 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



rarely the demands of country architecture as well as the site. 
Across the front of the house is a wide, roofed veranda, extend- 
ing beyond the house line on the northwest corner. How often 



I 



I 




CROSSWAYS. 

I pity humanity, baking on a south or east veranda, when, by building 
it as above and using an open rail, cool southwest breezes and a 
broadened view are obtained. 

Building up the stone foundation into two foot high base sup- 
ports to the veranda posts, as shown in the photograph, gives greater 
stability and a more pleasing effect than a continuous wooden railing. 
The wooden posts should have been twice as large. 
The Lavatory Theft. 

A screened minstrels' balcony on the stair landing is one of its 
features. A couple of steps under the main stairway give ample 
head room in a lavatory practically stolen from the cellar, a plan well 
worth more general adoption. Either living or dining room may be 
used for eating, as winter's sun or summer's shade dictates, for in 
the large butler's pantry are doors to each. 

The windowed hall on the third floor in the ell between ser- 
vants' quarters and main house is utilized as a servants' bathroom, 
but may be used as a thoroughfare on occasion, connecting the two 
portions of the house, as fixtures are screened with a wooden 
paneled partition — a pardonable makeshift under some circumstances. 
Crossways stands for comfort in every line. 
Red Towers. 

When I left Orange, the birthplace of Red Towers, I took 
with me as foreman a man born in Orange, who had never seen a 
rough bouldered stone wall like those crossing Westchester County 
and Connecticut in all directions. Indeed, the house is built 
in a stoneless land, as we in Connecticut understand stone and land. 
I've cleared many a Connecticut pasture with oxen, dynamite and 



AMERICA'S GIANT CAUSEWAY 



153 



crowbar when there were upheaved on the surface enough stones to 
completely cover the ground to a depth of several feet and in a single 
winter on less than a dozen acres have had ten thousand inches 
drilled and dynamited, yet Orange is hardly sixty miles 'cross country 
from Hillcrest Manor.* 




RED TOWERS. 



America's Giant Causeway. 

Red Towers savors a bit too much perhaps of the aggressive in 
architecture, yet is a dream of comfort within, while without a half 
dozen years' growth of trees and vines softened and toned its outline. 
Red lowers was a compromise between Queen Anne and an effort to 
do something out of the ordinary, a common failing, but standing for 
progress. It had many good points towering above its neighbors 
in its sheath of green, with foundation of selected hard brown 
sand stone, first story trap rock, similar to that in the Giant's 
Causeway in Ireland, and taken from a pillared rock deposit in the 
Orange Mountains, whose broken surface is almost a jet black and 
hard as flint — hearsay states it's the only Giant's Causeway in America. 
The mortar joints were red ; the balance of the house, both side 
walls and roof, covered with red tile, ornamented on chimney face 
and banded under the balcony with terra cotta bas-reliefs, while the 
tower was copied from one built on College Hill in Burlington, that 

The man who reduces acts to figures and glories in statistics states that allowing fifty 
cents a day for labor the stum walls of Connecticut equal in cost the improvements of all kinds 
in the entire state. 



154 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

hill of hills where from the windows on one side are seen Mt. Mans- 
field and the rare green mountains of Vermont, and from those on 
the other, snow-crowned Mt. Marcy, rising above Lake Champlain, 
surrounded by the health-giving pine forests of the Adirondacks. 

A large wood carving arched the porch veranda entrance, be- 
fore which was a broad stepping stone of granite six by eight feet. 

The front door was of quartered oak with carved lintel and 
leaded light, the knocker, in which was cut the owner's name, 
made from a knight's vizor, while the brass strap hinges and lock 
were heavy and of quaint design. 

The hall was trimmed in real cherry of dull velvet finish, and 
the brick hooded mantel, ceiling high, decorated with moose 
horns. Two large pillars carried the centre of the house, and sliding 
doors connected double parlors, dining room, conservatory and hall, 
making it possible to form one great pillared room when desired. 
The upper half of each conservatory sliding door consisted of a six 
foot square of plate glass. 

Conservatory. 

A honeycombed, ornamental design in the brick wall under 
the conservatory was copied from a palatial residence in the Berkshires 
and the glaring spectacle windows from some forgotten source. 

The conservatory formed the arc of a circle at one side of the 
house, its roof of heavy skylight wired glass with ventilators protected 
by galvanized wire screens. It was later roofed in wood to prevent 
breakage. Glass electroliers and brackets were used to avoid corro- 
sion. Connected by a private stair, but on a lower level, leaving an 
unobstructed view from the dining room windows, were the green- 
houses. From these windows, one looked out on a continuous bouquet 
of bloom so far below and at such an angle as to overcome objection- 
able glare. 

Just beyond were the cold graperies, roof connected to give 
length and proportion, yet entirely separated, and with air space 
between to avoid plant contamination through insect or disease. 

The library alcove, with high leaded windows over the book- 
shelves, was in a bayed tower, and opened from the southwest 
parlor, while from the north parlor was a door leading to the north- 
west veranda, thoroughly awned and with absolutely water-proof 
floor. The space beneath served for storage, sides being screened with 
translucent glass. 

Quartered oak trim was used in dining room, which was wain- 
scoted and had a squared bay on the southeast. The butler's pantry 
on the west was also trimmed in quartered oak. 

The basement, mainly above ground, contained kitchen, laundry, 
man's room, storage and furnace rooms, with potting house and 
boiler-room under the conservatory. 



THE SELECTED FLOOR 155 

One servants' bath was in the basement, side walls to a height 
of six feet and the floor being covered with thick skylight glass — an 
unwise experiment as it proved slippery. 

Kitchen walls were faced with white glazed brick. 

The basement was made absolutely water-tight and ground air- 
proof within and without with underd rains and tar and cement treat- 
ment on floor and side walls. 

From cellar to third floor was a lift large enough for trunks, 
but the block-and-tackle rigged in the upper loft over the stair well 
proved a disastrous experiment. 

The entire second floor trim, like entrance hall, stairs, and 
parlor, was of genuine cherry. 

One dressing room and an outdoor bedroom overlooked Llewel- 
lyn Park and the mountain. The bed alcove connected with bath 
and dressing room, and was separated from the boudoir by a Moorish 
horseshoe arch fifteen feet wide reaching from floor to ceiling. 

The billiard room on the third floor was plaster finish to tower 
peak. On this floor were bedrooms with special features, for instance, 
mantels of unique design from eight to twelve feet in width, 
special cabinets, odd shelving, and picture windows, also dressing 
rooms. 

The red birch floors were selected from a pile of flooring con- 
taining 500,000 feet, and it required the entire time of two men for 
a week to select the finest and most beautifully grained. When planed, 
glass or steel scraped, sand papered, filled and waxed, floors were 
produced which today after years of wear, are practically pictures in 
wood. 



156 HOir TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE 

GATHERING 

STORM. 



ELEMENTALS. 



BELLERICA 



157 



CHAPTER V. 



Bellerica — White Rock — A Yachtsman's Shelter — Shore 

Rocks. 

NO finer bit of earth was ever wave-washed than the strand 
of sand and cliff that fronts Bellerica. It seems a fragment 
of the rock-ribbed coast of Maine transferred to Long Island Sound. 
There are Moorish touches in outdoor bedrooms, roof and porch 
lines, with large supporting posts and overhang, while the wall 
space is pierced with rounded hays and large picture windows in 
groups of twos and threes. 




BELLERICA. 



The interior is spacious, with semi-Oriental treatment in stair, 
grill, balustrades, and alcoves. An over attic with casement win- 
dows hinged at the bottom, swinging inward and ever open, cools 
a third floor that is in many ways as pleasant and comfortable as the 
second. 

Large trees shade the porch and give seclusion. In fact, building 
and planting were tightly hand-clasped here. The advantages of 
immediately beautifying with tree and shrub are fully illustrated 
in the photographs showing both crude beginnings and mature de- 
velopment. 



158 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



Two Houses in One. 

A study of the floor plan will show that Bellerica is really a bi- 
family house, each having advantages, and the two quickly and prac- 
tically treated as one house when desired. 




WHITE ROCK. 



Here is conventional little White Rock, a Philadelphia inspira- 
tion. It may have been the white stone steps in that placid city that 
suggested this name, but the reason for its building was the fact that 
I chanced to see one day in crossing Walnut Street the demolition 
of one of the grand old houses of Philadelphia. I bought the interior 
trim, including doors and windows, which were quaint and odd, 
and had them shipped to Connecticut. 

The roofs of the lift windows follow the slope of the upper 
gambrel. The afterthought windows at the ridge are convenient 
though ugly, as afterthought windows as well as other built-in 
features sometimes are, but transformed a dark garret into comfort- 
able servants' quarters. 

A big white quarry ledge on the shore was selected as its site, 
cellar blasted, and practically in three months this bit of Quaker 
City, as far as windows, doors and trim were concerned, was basking 
on the shores of the Sound. 

A House Enlarged, Yet Not Enlarged. 

A very convenient house w r as White Rock, porch-pillared and 
porte-cochered, its interior more attractive than its exterior. The capa- 
city of the dining room was increased by the addition of a bay, an after- 
thought relief that helped amazingly, and the use of a round instead 



HARBOR VIEW ENTRANCE 



159' 



of a square table. A compromise serving pantry was made from a 
closet with doors opening into both dining room and kitchen. 

The front door had transom and side lights of "ye olden tyme," 
and all trim as stated was of pronounced Colonial type. A 
quaint and attractive staircase, columned living room, half a dozen 
cosy bedrooms, and a long room, half studio and half bedroom, over 
the porte cochere, all helped to make up a sightly and livable 
house. 

Years after, like four others of my creation, guided by sturdy 
horse and windlass, it strolled inland to give place to a more pre- 
tentious dwelling, but the quintette still exist as homes in the 
truest sense. 




Harbor View. 

A couple of stone entrance posts and a winding drive between 
trees that shade a roadway leading to the shores of the Sound reveal 
a wonderful panoramic view of island, sea, and headland as strikingly 
beautiful in its way as that which suddenly greets the beholder as 
he crosses for the first time the threshold of the Catskill House and 
sees at his feet the valley of the Hudson, or emerges from the darkness 
of the Haverstraw tunnel into the blaze of light revealing the 
startlingly beautiful view of that same Hudson flowing toward the 
sea. 

The development in lagoon and curving waterways is akin to 
fair Venice. Indeed, Connecticut's "Harbor View" or "Yachtsman's 
Shelter" is even more than the name implies, for it includes not only 
lagoon, harbor, and Sound views, but the beautiful woods through 
which the driveway reaches the shore are parked and arboretumed with 
rare skill. Houses of stone and stucco, shingle and brick, on wooded 
crag and hillock, fringe beach and cliff. 



160 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



A house of flesh and blood is Shore Rocks. It is, like Pinnacle, 
representative of the building experience of nearly two score of years, 
and many of my air castles are in it woven into reality. To me it 
embodies solid comfort and completeness of appointment, but it was 
a far cry from its inception to the pulling of the latch-string. 




SHORE ROCKS. 

Water Lawn Groomed by Nature. 

Volcanic-veined and lichen-rifted rock and boulder, both under 
and over cliff, stood where we blasted out its cellar. It seemed down- 
right sacrilege to swing the axe against the gnarled and twisted cedar 
that had staunchly breasted the storms of two hundred and fifty years 
or to destroy the moss grown and beautifully veined ledges with wedge, 
drill, and dynamite; but the choice was made, and today my dream of 
years, with its forty rooms, outlying pergolas, bathing pool, and yacht 
pier is a reality. The house is embowered in trees and every main room 
possesses an uninterrupted outlook across the Sound — a water lawn of 
many miles groomed by nature, one of man's care-free legacies, present- 
ing an ever changing kaleidoscope of beauty. 

Over the entrance of Shore Rocks is a chain-hung marquise, partly 
enclosed with a glassed-in vestibule, that essential hall draught-stopper, 
while on the brick outer posts are quaint non-rusting metal lamps. The 
cement and red tiled platform with metal edge and inset door mat is 
ornamented at its corners by lions, the platform being indented at the 
centre, forming a base pedestal support at each side. Cement joints 
between the tiling are three-quarters of an inch in width. All eave 
spoutheads are duplicates of Notre Dame gargoyles. 



WATER LAIVX GROOMED BY X. ITU RE 



161 




THE LAST OF THE THIRTY STEPS IN BUILDING. 



The outer vestibule door is metal-grilled its entire length, the 
inner single seven by nine door of English oak, sill of marble, siding 
of cement, ornamented at the centre with a classic head, while at 
either side in the white marbleized front are niches for plants, and 
an oddly wrought iron scraper of the vintage of a couple of centuries 
is set in the cement platform. 

The first story of Shore Rocks is ecru-face brick, every fifth 
course fastened with irons to the heavy wooden studding, giving an 
extra air space for warmth. It has a corbeled stepped-outward brick 
water table on cut stone foundation. The second story siding is of 
three coat work in cement, the last coat thrown on with a trowel to 
give an exceptionally rough effect and disguise the small surface cracks 
which always appear in stucco. The middle coat was put on over the 
first coat to cover any openings through which moisture might strike 
the galvanized wire lath, an important point to remember when 
using this construction. Wire lath must be stiffened with iron rods 
and separated from the wood with V's, thus furring out the 
outer walls, decreasing liability to crack as the wooden sheathing 
shrinks. This air-space makes an absolutely dry house, appropriately 
called furring, from the fur of an animal. 

The basement wall is of quarried stone; roof of red mission 
tile, and gables of chestnut plank set upright, of equal width, T'd and 
G'd and slightly V'd at joining with wooden keys placed a couple of 



162 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




y^ nTHT PIER 
<T^ot1 THE 




>6W 



FIRST AND SECOND STORY FLOOR PLANS. 



AN EASTERLY AT ll'ORK WITH A WILL 163 




SITE OF SHORE ROOKS. 




THE NORTH FRONT. 



164 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




SHEL,TEin::> harbor. 




THE ICE BORDERED COAST LINE ONCE IN A DOZEN YEARS. 



CHANGES 



165 




WHAT Till-; Yl'AllS BROUGHT. 



166 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




PROM SKELETON TO FINISHED HOUSE. 



GROWTH 



167 




BUILTJINCS THE OJVZCTO 



CiiXSTKI'i'Tlu.X IX VARIED STAGES. 



168 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE SITE THAT CHANGED. 



OUTFRONT AND IX FROST 



169 




Till-: EAST FRON' 




THE WEST ENTRANCE. 



170 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




MIRAGE ROOM, SLEEPING PORCH, STAIR, WINDOW SEAT. 



BJXISHIXG THE FUXXEL ST.HRfr.IY 171 



Sll- IRE ROCKS 

I living: Pier 

in a storm. 




SHORE ROCKS 

Diving Pier in 

the grip of 
trie Ice King'. 






/ :; 




feet apart on the seams. Woodwork of the upper portion of the 
house, together with the gables, is painted a hottle green, the rest of the 
trim being white. The eight foot overhang and this painting treat- 
ment lower the house. 

A projecting gable forms the top, and two windows the respective 
sides, of a panel five by ten feet, in which is fastened a copper bas-relief 
along graffito lines of a rescue at sea, following in a way that old 
Saxon style of exterior wall decoration. 

Windows, casement and lift, transomed and leaded, the majority 
of plate glass, number quite two hundred and twenty-five, and there 
are seventy-five doors and one hundred and twenty electric outlets. 

Deeply embrasured Georgian casement windows, showing the 
heavy centre cross, light the entrance hall, whose Moor is of quarry 
tile while the vaulted ceiling is braced at twenty-five foot height by 
cambered beams. Walls are paneled with oak in squares to ceiliiv: 
and the ceiling is of dark oak in Arabesque design. Set high in th. 1 
wall each side of the stair Landing gallery are paintings. 

Off the entrance hall are coat room and Lavatory, enlarged and 
heightened by infringing on kitchen and basement, though not to the 
detriment of either. 

Banishing the Funnel Stairway. 

In some ways, the unusual was attempted in Shore Rocks, as 
shown in the entrance, lower stairway and second storv corridor 



172 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE ENGLISH WINDOW IN THE LIBRARY AND WINDOW RECESS 
SEAT ON THE STAIRWAY. 




THE EAST SIDE OP LIVING ROOM, PORCH ROOM BEYOND. 



QUOIN, BUTTRESS AND ARCH 



173 



MAKING A LANDING 




X-AND-IrOCKEE MOTOR BOAT D&1»TH Of 
UKXOOtt "WAT6R 

THmrEtrr ft. 




LAND LOCKED MOTOR BOAT LAGOON. 



174 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE UPPER STAIR AND THE R. AND J. BALCONY. 

halls. Instead of the city scheme of an upright funnel from front 
door to roof, incidentally causing a large loss of heat, the stair- 
case from second to third story is at one side and behind a double 
arch, allowing of beamed ceiling treatment in the main stairway hall, 
and giving a twenty-five foot height in the clear over the stairs. One 
really enters the principal rooms of the house after passing through 
the entrance hall under a broad arch supported by rabid-mouthed, 
grotesquely-molded gargoyles, by a short flight of five six and one- 
half inch riser steps, twenty feet wide, which lead to the staircase 
hall twenty-five feet square lighted by leaded casements in the boudoir 
on the mezzanine floor. On the pedestals flanking these wide stairs 
are grouped masses of the unkillable Ficus Pandurata. 

Fireplace Opening 10'8". 

The hobbed fireplace opening in the staircase hall is ten feet eight 
inches wide. It has crane and trammels and from its iron header 



WIDE RASGE OE EIRE DOC, 



175 



beam are suspended three metal rings used in "ye olden tyme" to 
handle "yc huge Yule log." The broad mantel shelf of oak, banded 
and ornamented with wrought iron, projecting two feet from side wall, 
is eighteen inches through and eight feet from the floor, supported 
by caryatides, and the motto across its face reads, "Sings the blackened 
log a tune learned in some forgotten June." For either end of this 
mantel shelf we had planned a complete set of ancient armor, but 
compromised with a single specimen of the armorers' art guarding 
the stairway. 




THE PORCH ROOM SOUTH AND WEST. 
THE EAST VERANDA, 



Wide Range of Fire Dog. 

In Shore Rocks the field of the fire dog is wide, ranging from 
twice the size of a Great Dane to that of the low pudgy dachshund, 
and from ponderous black iron to lighter framed, gleaming brass and 



176 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




GLIMPSES OF THE SEA. 



THE TREE ROOM 



177 



THE. BALCONY 




CORWtR WINDOWS 



.SUKU-E. 7x5 BOOR. 



:= ■ 1 




MINSTRELS' 
M*COOT 




WORKING OUT IXTKRIOl; 1 > KTAILS. 



178 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THt tOFTY EHTRJWCE- Mil 





.•■» i 
WIRELESS ROOM, CONSERVATORY, MEZZANINE FLOOR. 



STALKIXG LION GUARD RAIL 



179 



nickel forged and molded in varied forms from cannon ball crowned 
fronts to grotesque midget fire-warders. 

The woodwork of all first story rooms, including stairs and 
wainscoting of both entrance and upper and lower staircase halls, is 
English oak and all have oak floors. Basement and bedrooms are 
floored with Georgia rift pine. 




\h^f$ k 



THE WIRELESS STATION. 

THE SHELTERED LAGOON 

THE TILED YACHT PIER. 

Stalking Lion Guard Rail. 

The first stair landing is ten feet wide, reached by four 
steps of the same width, with ten and one-half-inch tread, the 
protecting side rail formed by a stalking lion of Caen stone, and the 
main balustrade hand-carved, with deep and broad top-rail. Turning, 
the stairs rise about ten feet and connect with a musicians' or min- 
strels' balcony fourteen feet wide by twenty feet long, supported by 



180 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




A BAY IN ONE OF THE MASTER'S BED ROOMS. 




THE N. W. END OF DINING ROOM, SHOWING BARRELED CEILING. 



A STUDY IN ROCK FORMATION 181 

T-Ht TH,fcD YACHT PJER 



IP- J A, I J* 




A STUDY IN ROCK 
fOKrtATIOJr i° T PROFESSOR AHD UlYPMN 











REACHIIid FOR THt GOAIr 



- 







35 

A. BIT OF THE. BEACH 




;*• 



* 



tTrm 






THE MOTOR CAV£, 



THE ESPLANA] »E 



182 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



DETAILS or SHOKE ROCKS 




IN THt SHADOW IN THE- SUNLIGHT — OtUVl 

IN THE SHADOW-IN THE SUNLIGHT-OF LIFE. 



TRILOBITE NEWEL CAP 183 

brackets on the ends of which are carved panther heads. This 
balcony has a reel leather trimmed settle its entire Length, and over- 
looks both entrance and. staircase halls. 

Window Seat on the Stair. 

Halt way up the ten-foot rise is an oriel alcove, comfortably 
cushioned and projecting into the library, into which its casements 
swing high above the book-cases. Two of the translucent leaded 
windows have the usual book-mark motif, while on the centre window 
is the coat of arms, mottoed, "Seek and thou shalt find." Both hall 
and library are improved by this swinging casement, whether open 
or closed. The unattractive space under the stairs, sometimes utilized 
by a homely boxed-in closet, is featured with a marble-rimmed plant 
basin filled with interrogation point fronded ferns and brilliant 
foliaged plants, while surmounting the main newel is a lion rampant 
carved in oak. The under side of the stair soffit curves to the floor. 

The second story hall is thirty-three feet square, including the 
stair well opening, and is furnished as a room. 

The third story stair hall is lighted and carried to the somewhat 
impressive height of twenty-five feet by abruptly stopping the fourth 
story floor beams thus forming an overhanging balcony — the roof 
dormer lighting both halls and stairs. 

Newel Problem. 

Sameness is avoided in the stairs, whether basement or top story, 
back or front. Newels are of varied form, some built into pillars 
to ceiling height, with naiad or faun faced brackets braced against the 
ceiling; others plastered barriers surmounted with carved brackets 
and scrolls, or merged into railings, with inset has reliefs. Crowning 
one newel is a crystal ball, another a statue, and a third a flaming 
torch. Balusters are placed singly or in twos and threes or sepa- 
rated by panels. 

Trilobite Newel Cap. 

We decorated the newel from second to third story with a bit 
of Himalayan rock lathe-turned in globe form, containing trilobites 
that ceased to breathe over two million years ago. One squared 
newel post reaching to ceiling height has metal half inch beading at 
each of its four corner joints, and gives bracing strength to an 
especially long trimmer. 

Living Room. 

Either through the wide mirrored door of the staircase hall or 
by the little library stair (which is protected on the living room side 
by a settle instead of a rail, on the opposite side by a brass standard and 
silken rope) one enters a living room thirty-five by forty-five feet, in 



184 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



itself as large as many modest country houses. It is a room of arches, 
columns and mirrors. Six pairs of French casements open to a com- 
pletely furnished porch room overlooking the water, counteracting in 
a measure the lonesome grandeur and monotony of an exceptionally 
large room. The entire east, north and south sides are doored and 
windowed in glass in winter, and its thirteen foot ceiling is cemented 
on galvanized wire lath, crossed by ebonized beams. 




THE MOTOR BOAT CAVE. 
WEST END OP PIER. 



Two corners of the large living room have groined ceilings, 
while the remainder of the room is straight beamed. Fluted columns, 
and pilasters, double, single, and Ionic capped are freely used. 



THE COHSE. 



FLYING ARCHES 

TKZ MARQUISE 



185 




Ti!c OAK THAT SPANNED 2i CEWTURI&& JfiS= 

hi <■§*> 











BEACH AND ROCK. 



L 

: - - - fan. 




THE HALF BURIED LEVIATHAN. 



186 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




CARVED BY THE ELEMENTS. 



THE SEGMENTED CEILING 



187 




THE BREAKFAST ALCOVE WITH PICTURE WINDOW 
THE IMG BAY IN DINING ROOM. 




THE HALL FIREPLACE, A FIRE OPENING OF TEN FEET EIGHT IXCHES. 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




ENTRANCE TO YACHT PIER FROM VERANDA. 




A BIT OP THE MAINE COAST WITHIN AN HOUR OP NEW YORK. 



HERALDRY 189 

Dining Room. 

Through sliding doors whose pockets aie evenly ceiled to guide 
the door and as protection from dust and draught and whose 
upper halves are leaded glass to avoid the barn like appearance given 
by a solid sliding door, one enters the barreled, arched ceilinged dining 
room. This is partly Grecian, with walls and ceilings paneled in 
marhleized cement. The floor is of quaint eight inch wide thor- 
oughly kiln dried oak planks, riveted every four feet with hlack 
inset wooden keys. The sliding door to butler's pantry, made to 
close tightly yet move easily, controlled by foot pressure, is not in 
direct line with the kitchen door. 

A semi-polygon bay on the Sound side is formed of plate glass 
picture windows and used as a breakfast alcove while the bay 
eighteen feet wide on the north fitted with seven deeply embrasured, 
transomed Elizabethan grouped windows — a flagrant lapse from a 
strictly Greek room — is cool and inviting on the hottest day and 
on the coldest a tropical temperature is assured by the combination 
of an efficient heating plant and double windows. 

Barreled Ceiling. 

The half moons formed by the barreled or segmented ceiling at 
each end of this room are decorated, one with viking craft manned 
by fierce and stalwart Norsemen on battle bent, the other with the 
historic Mayflower on its errand of peace and good will. The door 
of the electrically lighted cabinet for the display of cut glass balances 
the butler's pantry door. 

Living and dining rooms can be thrown into one, giving an 
area of twenty-five hundred square feet, or, if desired, all of the 
gala rooms can be made to form one large room, aggregating over 
six thousand square feet. 

Library. 

On the level with the entrance hall are library and con- 
servatory, also finished in oak and connected by a short flight of 
stairs with the living room. This arrangement gives the library 
a height of sixteen feet, and ample overhead space for the appropriate 
use of large cambered ceiling beams. 

Under the windows, planted against a panel is a wall fountain 
of Caen stone and a corresponding panel on the exterior of the house 
is decorated with a bronze bas-relief. The arch under the stairs and 
beneath the platform has a uniform spring across the entire space. 
Below it is an ingle-seat. 

Heraldry. 

An heraldic design is molded in the hood of the Caen stone 
cement mantel which rises, in the form of a wide shaft, slightly 
tapering, to the extreme height of the room and has rounded instead 



190 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




LIBRARY AND CONSERVATORY. 



^R M P* W 1 



THE WIDE STAIRWAY. 



THE BO J TING LAYOUT 



191 




PES6QUHJ CL0TH2S YAK 
BELVEDERE, SERVICE GATE, FOUNTAIN. 



192 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




V!£W FROM TH£ 6AZSB0 



VIEW FROM THE GAZEBO. 



A BALANCED WORLD 193 

of squared edges. The lofty, clear glass, English leaded windows on 
the west about fourteen feet high have centred in their upper panes 
a color design. At this end of the room a quaint little stair leads 
to a mezzanine floor fitted up as a reading or writing den. When 
the stair casement bay window on the north above the bookcases is 
swung open, one views the conservatory, which forms a portion of 
the south side of the library, and from the library the second story 
beamed corridors. With casements closed and drawn draperies over 
the stained leaded glass, each room is completely separated, but when 
open extended vistas are disclosed. 

Electric Fountain. 

A fountained conservatory leading from the library is roofed 
on the south with wood instead of glass, to avoid damage, prevent 
glare on second story windows, and give a cooler room. All upper 
lights of the nine windows that front the south are leaded, and orna- 
mented with delicate tracery. A low glass-roofed greenhouse is an 
essential feeder if one wishes profuse bloom in a wooden roofed 
conservatory. 

The white tile floor, thoroughly drained, is a restful contrast 
with the green of the plants. In the centre is an electric fountain, 
and on each side of the entrance are heavy Ionic-capped columns, 
while the side wall of the library the entire width of the room above 
the conservatory arch is of leaded glass, the design a sylvan forest 
scene, the inward view, birds, flowers and fronds, stirred by the 
splashing, electrically illuminated fountain ; the outward Long Island 
Sound. 

A Balanced World. 

In a corner of the conservatory was an aquatic wardian case 
consisting of a glass jar covered with a pane of glass and fairly air- 
tight, its contents water, algae from the brookside, and minute animal 
life. In this ad infinitum world were carried on year after year 
the processes of being. In a sense the same water, the same plant, 
the same insect, life and death and life again, an everlasting world 
within a world. 

Kitchen. 

On the main floor is the kitchen, with floor and side walls white 
tiled. A separate galley, in which the glass-hooded range fitted with 
electric chimney fan, makes the main kitchen comfortable even in 
the hottest weather. 

Windows overlooking the front door are set overhead close 
to ceiling and with the addition of a skylight give pure air and a 
cooler kitchen. 



194 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



Ample pantries, refrigerator room and servants' porch, complete 
the first floor, while below stairs are boiler and storage rooms, salt 
and fresh water baths, with showers and boat racks. 




ONE OP THE THREE SCREENED SLEEPING PORCHES. 
CLOTHES CHUTE CLOSET AND LAUNDRY TUBS. 



Six Tubs Centre the Laundry. 

The laundry in the above-ground basement has six tubs in the 
centre of the room placed back to back. When covered they form 
a large table and aid in transforming the laundry into an additional 
sitting room for the maids. The stairway is grilled and between two 
columns joined by a grill one enters the servants' dining hall, in a 
corner of which are dish closets and porcelain pantry sink. A 
balanced lift connected with the kitchen prevents dish breaking. 
Hardwood floors furred for air space are laid over the tar coated 
cement, and windows extend from floor to ceiling. Rooms decorated 



A SHADED BREEZE POINT 



195 




GEORGIAN WINDOW AND GAZEBO. 



196 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



THt UffiD LOCKED HARBOR 




TVimcs ARCHES 



A FORBEAR. 



THE FERN CORNER 



197 




THE STAIRCASE HALL. 



and calcimined in suitable colors, and woodwork white enameled, 
give a homelike look and eliminate all suggestion of a basement. 
Walls and floors separating the servants' quarters from the main 
house are thoroughly deadened. 

Outside doors are four feet wide with upper panels glazed. 

Bedrooms. 

Bedrooms number twenty, several en suite, each with its own 
bath or bath closet, and two with salt water connection. There are 
three sleeping porches of generous size, and adjoining them cosy 
windowed and heated dressing rooms. 

An overhanging stair balcony and a studio finished and beamed 
to the ridge with a window filling the entire north side are additional 
features. Some bedrooms have curved top bed alcoves from whose 
brass rods are suspended draperies, and jewel safes are inset in walls. 
There are burglar-proof vaults concealed in chimney arch in the 



198 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




CONSERVATORY AND PORCH ROOM. 




THE BATHING BEACH. 



CHILDREN'S SWIMMING POOL 



199 



basement, fire protected by air spaces, the new close-jointed sliding 
door for closets and narrow spaces; secret panel doors in dressers and 
lockers; a roof lookout back of the chimney and an aluminum clothes 
chute to laundry. 

Every house should have a readily reached and railed-in lookout 
platform. Aside from the uplift view, it is far easier to inspect and 
repair roof, chimney, gutters, and flashings. 

The tub in the bathroom over the east hall closet is inset eighteen 
inches in the Moor, protected with side railing, somewhat as in a 
Pompeiian bath, and several tubs are made stationary against the side 
walls— less tiling, less dust, more sanitary, yet more difficult to repair 
a clogged or split trap or pipe, and greater disturbance of tiling. 

Several bedrooms, billiard room and den are on the third floor. 




TWO VIEWS OP HARBOR FRONT. 



200 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



The Telescopic House. 

Shore Rocks is so planned and built that certain floors, stair- 
ways and rooms can be cut off from the rest of the house, the 
plumbing reduced by a series of shut-offs to that required for an 
ordinary ten-room house, three-fourths of the big heating plant 




ENTRANCE HALL. 
MUSICIANS BALCONY. 



easily disconnected, and the occupants thus made practically inde- 
pendent of servants by reducing a working force of a dozen or more 
to two or three . All upright heating pipes placed to be easily reached 
are concealed within closets or columns. 

Swimming Pool. 

Grounds are laid out with pergola, Italian gardens, and swim- 
ming pool, depth of water in which is controlled by a water- 



A CONNECTICUT CAPRI 



201 




WIIKX MAX WAS YOUNG. 



202 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

VIEW OT THE OFFING 




"E-ISHmCi TROM VERAHBA 
EXTEriSIOK 



Ill I: SINGLE DOOR 



203 



gate to the open Sound. Electric lights edge the rim ojf this 
pool, dispelling "eerie creeps" that sometimes overtake even the 




THE SINGLE DOOR. 
ENTRANCE AND STAIR HALLS. 

seasoned water dog who dips at midnight, while on barrier wall, 
esplanade and parapet are large terra cotta vases or statues in red, 
gray, and verde-antique. 

There are deep-water landing pier, cement fireproof garage 
with suitable pit, and under the veranda bowling alley, workshop 
and bathing houses with hot and cold showers. In fact many of the 
features that make Pinnacle the house ideal one will find also in 
Shore Rocks. 

A pergolad gazebo is built on seamed, rugged, sea-wecd-clad 
rocks, a peculiar ledge formation fronting this portion of the Sound 
and of keen interest to the geologist. The stone rampart rail centred 



204 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



with plants its entire length, edges the water with a green wall of 
salt-defying cedars. Under the gazebo, which is built on heavy stone 
arches, is a grotto. Sea grasses grow in stone crevices near the 
splashing waves, and hammocks swung in the shadow of post and 
arch mean luxurious comfort even on the warmest day. 




THE MOTOR BOAT CAVE. 
CHILDREN'S SWIMMING POOL. 



Peering from a cave-like fissure in the rock of the grotto is a metal 
dragon that in a storm spouts white flecked foam with a roar above 
that of the pounding waves — a bit of realism that often pleases 
grown-ups as well as children. 

Salt air and occasional salt mist spitefully but fruitlessly assail 
the poplars, Japanese privets, beach plums, the Euonymous, sea buck- 
thorns, tamarisks and Rosa rugosas that among other plants adapted 
for use at the seashore fringe the rocky water front. 



SALT DEFYING PLANTS 



205 



Stone buttresses of pronounced entasis and flying arches that 
support the gazebo are buffeted by pounding waves and even the top 
of the pergola at times is bathed with Hying spume. At night electric 
lights illumine grotto, pergola, belvedere, swimming pool, yacht pier, 




THE SERVICE GATEWAY, OUTWARD. 
ENTRANCE TO HARBOR. 



gardens overhanging the sea, and the boat storage room. Indeed, 
electricity has been harnessed to the limit of its present tether in 
Shore Rocks, installations including vacuum cleaning plant, range, 
laundry equipment, elevator, and telephones in each main room. 

Yacht Pier. 

The yacht pier is reached from the veranda by cement steps, pro- 
tected by stone balustrade to red quarry-tiled landings. Stone posts 
are capped with plant receptacles. 



206 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

THE EVER CHANGING VIATER FROHI «m>VIEW T jj£ £ jpj^ AttADE 




A GEOLOGIST'S PARADISE. 



FROM no. IT TO VERANDA 



207 



The Motor Boat Lagoon. 

Lower down is the big stone pier, also quarry tiled, its 
centre excavated for a land-locked lagoon about 20 x 30 feet 
where a motor boat can berth in absolute safety. The pier is equipped 
with boat davits, diving plank, floating platform reached by steps. 




A T.MUNGING CORNER ON YACHT PIER. 
BELVEDERE AND SWIMMING POOL. 

and heavy galvanized iron rings for fastening boats. A brass 
railed platform and adjustable yacht steps hang from the wall of the 
lagoon. One end of the pier is covered with an awning on galvanized 
iron frame and single tiled steps are placed at regular intervals among 
the rough rocks that edge the Sound, that safety may not be sacrificed 
to the picturesque. An iron roller inset in the edge of the pier 
readily handles small boats without injury. At one end of the beach 
is rigged a convenient set of ways, with block and tackle fastened in 
the rocks, so that a motor boat or even a large yacht can be warped 
out. 



.208 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Our flag pole does double duty, as on it is rigged a wireless, 
catching messages from Eastport, Maine, to the Florida Keys, 
and for a thousand miles out at sea, from dreadnought and liner as 
they fly past, or the code language of a manoeuvering army. 

The dock is partially enclosed with a woven, galvanized wire 
guard with brass top rail and broad stone ledge steps are built against 
its sides, enabling one to bathe or land from boats at all tide levels.* 

In the grounds is an interesting example of tree growth. Bor- 
dering the Sound are two trees, one a hoary-headed oak of two and 
a half centuries, and less than a stone's throw from it a Wier's cut 
leaf maple that I shouldered and planted as easily as I would a bean 
pole exactly seventeen years ago. The trunk of the maple is now 
three-quarters the diameter of the sturdy oak, and in height closely 
crowds its aged neighbor. 

Centreing the belvedere is a sun dial of the type that marked 
the hours for Pliny in that wonder garden. It is fitted with time 
equation and bears the motto, "It is always morning somewhere in 
the world," the antithesis of the less helpful and more lugubrious 
saying, "We are all traveling toward sunset." 

"■The absence of all sewage in the clear water surrounding Shore Rocks made our 
special and essential August battle against the teredo and xylotrya strenuous. Kyanizing the 
wood did not rout the mollusk, his diet being minute organisms and plants that float through 
the doorway of his shell-lined house-tomb. Copper paint and big headed rusty nails saved 
boats, ways, and spiles from the inroads of these destructive rats of the water. 



UNSHADOWED OUTLINES 



209 




TW<> SEASONS. 



210 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



1 :'#C 










THE 

BUTRATICE HAIL 

AND 

STAIR CASE. 

HALE 



-J 



PINNACLE THE HOUSE 



IDEAL. 



PINNACLE 



211 



CHAPTER VI. 

Pinnacle., The House Ideal, Yet Thoroughly Practical 

Home. 




PINNACLI-:. 



THE building of Pinnacle was the realization of a desire to put 
under one roof the experiences of a lifetime in experimental 
building, therefore I say that for twenty-five years I had been 
building Pinnacle before the time was ripe, and that June morning 
dawned when I staked out the house, and, emulating the railroad 
builder, "turned over the first clod of earth." 

While its cost carried well over $100,000 it contained some 
features that could easily be introduced into a $2,500 bungalow. 

Let us trace backward its how and why. Location was of first 
importance. Should it be by the edge of some inland lake, gemmed 
'mid rock-ribbed mountains; on one of the Thousand Islands stem- 
ming the current of a mighty river, or near the sand and rock-bound 
shores of Long Island Sound, the centre of Eastern yachting; close 
to the roaring breakers, or in cloud-land, on some barren, ozone- 
bathed mountain peak, near the snow line; to the depths of the 
health-giving North woods; in the swim or away from it? But the 
snow line did not jibe with rose gardens, and the restless sea seemed 
ever to impart its restlessness to nerve and muscle. Then came the 
idea of using the old Dillaway place in the Berkshires, consisting of 
two hundred acres of woodland, meadow, and grassy hill top, and a 



212 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

charming demesne it proved, the long driveway flanked with a 
veritable floral calendar wherein for eight months of the year and 
every day of the eight months new blossoms opened to the sunlight, 
and during the remaining months the rare coloring of red-stemmed 
dogwoods and steel blue spruces brightened a drear landscape. Near 
by stood tall Irish junipers, like sentinels among their fellows, inter- 
spersed with vari-colored, gracefully feathered Retinosperas, and 
Biotas in silver, gold, and green. In the centre of our largest field, 
in size, as a plainsman would put it, "three whoops, a halloa, and a 
holler," was left intact, picturesquely outlined against the sky line 
a ghostly dead tree — resting place for the bourgeois chicken hawk or 
imperial eagle who, unhampered by adjacent towers of green, scans 
with keen eye the horizon both for enemies and prey. 

As nature had placed forest, hill, and dale, silver-threaded river, 
babbling brook and limpid pool exactly right to meet our require- 
ments, location was simpler than construction. Eschewing clay soil, 
the very worst for a building site, we pre-emptied the best, a dry, 
porous gravel edging a seamless, free-from-moisture granite ledge. * 
How to Face the House. 

The sun was invited where it would be most welcome. The 
rising sun at times met us at breakfast, scorching beams of July and 
August shot by our dining table, as this room faced southeast, but 
the living room, large enough to dodge heat rays or bask in their 
health-giving glow as temperature dictated, faced the sunny south 
and breezy west. The library on the north welcomed with blazing 
log, easy chair, and book, while the kitchen, as it faced north and 
east, could not saturate the house with odors that the west wind 
seems to joy in scattering. Due west rooms we found need special 
ventilation, as they broil to their farthest recesses with the heat of 
the low western sun, while in a southern exposure the King of Day 
is high in the heavens. 
Architecture. 

Before location came the vital question of architecture. Should 
it be Byzantine, Moorish, Gothic, French or Italian Renaissance, 
Elizabethan or Jacobean, a house outlined with Palladian formality 
without and probably inconvenient within, or the construction repre- 
sented by that talismanic word of the Nineteenth and Twentieth 
Centuries — Colonial. The latter, with its high pillars, square rooms, 
and glaring "don't touch me" white enamel finish, to us lacked the 
homelike feeling that all crave, but its impressive columned and archi- 
traved exterior made it a near second in the final decision, as a pil- 
lared Colonial front is always a favorite. We could not copy com- 
pletely the English country house, with its small diamond windows 
and lack of veranda and porch room, unsuited to our climate, but a 

B 'The redemption of any soil, including clay, as a building site is possible by thor- 
ough drainage and the correct use of stone, cement, oil and tar. 



A BONE-DRY HOUSE 213 

coherent expression of the best, combining as far as feasible the 
intrinsic worth of all, brought us into that somewhat complex realm, 
the New American. 

In considering the mooted question as to which is more desirable, 
exterior or interior beauty, the argument that thousands see the out- 
side to one who enters a house counted as nothing in our decision to 
make an ideal interior, even at the sacrifice of exterior features. 
A Bone-Dry House. 

Corrugated hollow brick tile above the stone basement, covered 
with a rough coat of cement, was decided upon, but — and the but 
is a big one — the vitally important work of water-proofing by tarring 
the hollow brick tile on the back, and furring for a two inch air space 
aided greatly in making Pinnacle a bone-dry-house. Gables were 
paneled with chestnut timber, realistically chipped by the broad axe, 
avoiding the regularity of the scalloped pie-crust imitation. Though 
rough cement holds more moisture, it conceals the inevitable minia- 
ture cracks, and with suitable air spaces all side walls were damp- 
proof. It is the builder's duty to combat ground air to the finish. 
Any substance charged with from thirty to fifty per cent, of fumes, 
depending on soil conditions, detrimental to man's well being is 
worthy his keenest steel.* 

Pinnacle was fireproof as far as I-beam, hollow brick, glazed 
and unglazed terra cotta, tile, cement, wire, copper, glass, wire glass, 
and fireproof paint could make it. 

Exterior requirements called for embellishments of a tourelle 
on corbeled base, minaret, campanile, and dormers in a major key, 
and to harmonize its varied outline demanded ample space and a com- 
manding site. 

We followed the rule that a house should rise naturally from 
ledge or greensward. Paths and roads, of which there were but few, 
simply touched it at salient points, curving at easy gradient toward 
gate, garage, and garden. Foiled thus 'gainst nature's restful colors, 
more harmony was gained than by a network of blue graveled roads 
or dingy black asphalt close to house line, save in the necessary car- 
riage sweep. In fact, those not hourly thoroughfares were founda- 
tioned by closely cropped turf, sloping away from which were banks 
of bloom and foliage, but from these were barred swift moving or 
lumbering vehicles, whether powered by horse or gasoline. 
The Builder's Truck Horse, Cement. 

Cement, though it shows marks of the beast in lime efflorescence 
and dampness, makes a fine truck horse, anil we used it profusely 
in archway and buttress, outside steps and veranda rail, swimming 
pool, curbing, retaining walls and in walks, cellar and laundry floors, 

-The moccasin shod or unshod Indian drew electricity through the soil as the tree drags it 
forth by the rays of the- sun, doubtless to his well being, but modern dwellings and modern 
living demand drier conditions. Statisticians claim that common sense hygiene would banish 
forty-five per cent of our present ills. 



214 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

side walls, back halls and servants' quarters — anywhere and every- 
where that rough usage could mar, as well as in curves and molded 
ornaments, buttresses hollowed for plant receptacles, cement window- 
sill boxes, steps, seats and columns. Cement flooring was especially 
treated to prevent crumbling under friction, as a common cement 
floor is never clean. Under conditions where wood covered cement 
or brick there was ventilation. 

Marble dust cement was used, efflorescent stains if present were 
removed with a one-tenth solution of muriatic acid. Capillary 
attraction fought with anti-damp, thick, pasty, water-proof paint, 
made our walls practically moisture-proof, as even the foundation 
stones were separately coated on sides and back with tar and 
wooden pegged between the joints for air spaced plastering. In all 
cement flooring was used a core of galvanized 1-2 inch wire mesh. 
Corners of the brick bay of the conservatory were of sheep-nose 
molded brick, avoiding the usual dirt collecting angle formed in a 
bay. The water table, of ogee bricks based with cut stone, threw 
water well away from foundations. 

Outbuildings not roofed with fireproof tile or asbestos and 
cement manufactured shingles were covered with red cedar shingles, 
which often outwear white, the latter splitting more easily and causing 
many an exasperating leak. 

No shingles over six inches wide were used ; they were split that 
width when necessary, and laid with four and one-half instead of 
the usual five and one-half inch weatherage. Pantiles roofed some 
of the more important buildings. 

Valleys were flashed with copper to a width of eighteen inches, 
and a wide open valley left to delay as long as might be the inevitable 
rotting of shingles through moisture, always a formidable enemy. 

Construction was closely watched, with an eye to circumventing 
the fire fiend, and the carpenter who led stringers and rammed slid- 
ing doors into or against the chimney, as well as the plumber or 
plasterer who left fires unguarded, or used defective salamanders, 
received his Saturday night pay in a blue envelope. 

The Window Problem. 

Our aim was to combine comfort, convenience and luxury. One 
often enters an imposing dwelling with eager enthusiasm for a pro- 
spective architectural feast, but leaves with a keen sense of dis- 
appointment because of a window set too high or a staircase that had 
to be searched for and when found was dark and narrow, bringing 
up in a windowless hall. A generous forecourt, esplanade and belve- 
dere once decided upon, attention was turned to the windows. 
It took time to settle whether they should be big and staring or unob- 
trusive and picturesque, to decide upon the merits of glaring plate 
glass over against the time honored leaded oriel pane. Outlook 
sometimes tires of manorial diamond panes, as does the housemaid 



THE WINDOW PROBLEM 215 

who cleans them. We finally compromised on plate glass where 
there was an extensive view, in several cases fitted with a swinging 
shutter of colored or clear leaded glass in simple design, serving to 
soften both light and outline, and answering the purpose of a double 
window in winter. 

Large paned windows tend to decrease and small to increase 
the apparent size of a house both within and without and certainly 
detract greatly from the pleasing inlook of any dwelling, still, 
picture windows here and there always give good value for their 
framing cost, whether in view of glorious mountain range, white 
crested waxes dashing "gainst rock-ribbed coast, or in more peaceful 
contrast a pastoral scene or a towering, swaying forest. In sombre 
rooms some windows stretched nearly to ceiling height, where there 
is more light to the square foot, though this treatment seemed to 
lower the rooms; several had smooth edged plate glass wind shields 
about twenty-four inches high which could be easily lifted, as they 
slide upward in grooves, in others a framed sheet of glass set on the 
sill swung inward from the top, and gave still greater ventilation. 

The House That Pays No Tax. 

Monsieur Mansard is said to have circumvented that senseless 
window tax of France which placed a premium on dark houses by 
adapting, not inventing, the windowed roof that bears his name, 
thus helping to supplant imitation painted doors and windows which 
economy sometimes led the builder to intersperse with the real, cater- 
ing to that monstrous law which enforced payment for air and sun- 
light. Our building laws tend in the opposite direction, while it is 
said Buenos Aires, that ideal city of ideal houses, goes us one better, 
as he who builds the most artistic house pays no tax. In some coun- 
tries it is said a new house supplanting an old is untaxed. 

"Woodman, spare that tree," however pathetically rendered, 
never held back the axe when the alternative was shade instead of 
health-giving sunlight. Inset in a few windows were restful leaded 
lights — in one a fishing craft, in another a coat of arms, and book- 
marks in the library. One glance through a half open casement 
thus decorated inclines to optimism. Windows with large panes were 
exteriorly draped with climbing vines.* Height was another ques- 
tion. The majority were so placed as to afford an unobstructed 
view when seated, while in the kitchen they were set high to avoid 
overlooking the front door approach, additional light being obtained 
through a skylight. Both gave rare ventilation. No casements 
were used on the first floor, sash-hung windows giving greater secur- 
ity, less draught, and being more easily screened, but when used we 
hung them to open outward, rabbeting thoroughly, and hanging from 
the top those more likely to be left open to prevent their being whisked 

: Wl- once realistically gilt framed and wire hung a picture window that shamed the 
arti-ts' most strenuous endeavors. 



216 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

across the lawn in case of a wind storm. All casement windows were 
fitted with the necessary convex screens which, however, more readily 
rust and decay. 

Windows were chain-hung on brass pulleys to avoid snapping, 
stretching, or slipping of cords. They were fitted with automatic attach- 
ment holding them at any height, and with non-rattling fix- 
tures, metal weather strips, and automatic fastenings. In some low 
studded rooms box windows slid upward into the partition, allowing 
broad view panes. Parting strips with adjustable screws in sunken 
sockets matched in color the hardware, and non-rusting wire screens 
had a patent insect escape to lure the fly to the open. 

Leaded lights that cheer with varied hue both out and in- 
looker as day merges into night lighted the staircase landing. 

Most leaded and stained glass bathroom windows were set 
high, and even a northern room was glowed by the use of opalescent 
glass of golden hue. We also juggled with two rooms facing due 
north, producing in some degree the effect of light and warmth by 
judicious placing of wall dressing mirrors. 

Corner windows were many, as they give most light and more 
wall space for furniture, but care was taken that none were in line 
with those on the opposite side of a room. First story windows were 
set 2' 6" from floor line, and those of second and third stories a 
trifle higher. 

Translucent glass windows were, fitted close to ceiling line on 
the hall side in several rooms with but one outside wall, affording 
more light and ventilation, and all bedrooms had transoms or fan 
lights. 

Glass formed the upper half of the back stair partition, and the 
rail fitted with the hand grip.* 

Fastened over the entire outside window were screens practically 
invisible, the wire approaching an atmospheric color, with frames 
painted to match trim and aid in the illusion. In some cases screens 
dropped into pockets when not in use. 

Double windows were drawn tightly in place by screws put into 
the frame through screw eyes fastened in the in-face of the double 
sash, and each had its own ventilating wicket. 

Telescopic Window. 

The five inch round lenses were so ground that at some angles 
distant objects were magnified, but the effect on the eyes made the 
scheme impracticable. 

Single Block Stone Steps. 

The set of three entrance steps and the buttresses at each side 
cut from a single block of granite, prevented for all time a 
sagging, open-jointed step. 

-The dark hall and stair were unknown conditions. 



FEUDAL HALL 217 




THE KNOCKER MADE FAMOUS BY PAUL REVERE. 

The Pig Door. 

The door through which we entered the home was called in 
old English parlance the "pig door," built by our ancestors to pre- 
vent wandering swine from encroaching on granary or dwelling. 
Both upper and lower halves swung on ponderous black iron hinges, 
and were oak-ribbed, bolt-studded and iron-banded. The quaint iron 
knocker was that used by Paul Revere when, on the night of his 
wild ride through Lexington and Concord, he awakened John Han- 
cock and Samuel Adams with the warning that the British were 
marching on the Concord stores. Only a bit of metal, yet few lift 
the old knocker without being thrilled by the thought that it once 
vibrated with the first shots of the Revolution fired on the village 
green of Lexington — that fusillade that was heard round the world. 

Feudal Hall. 

In the hall we strike the key note of the house. Centreing the 
home, it centres our thoughts of hospitality and good cheer, its walls 
ever greeting the coming and speeding the parting guest. The 
impress of feudalism stamped generous fireplace, and vaulted and 
groined roof. Cold, I grant, through its very grandeur, but home 
feeling is ever the same, whether in mediaeval mansion, elaborated with 
drawbridge, portcullis, and conning tower, or in the rose-porched 
cottage under the hill. 

Living Room. 

Passing through the entrance hall, we enter the living room 
of Pinnacle. The half dozen French windows face the west, opening 
upon the loggia from which broad steps edging the esplanade lead to 
the formal gardens, embellished with pergolas and arbors. At the end 
of the long vista is the Italian adaptation of statue and vase. 



218 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Looking down on the sunken gardens, the eye covers a wide 
range of rare trees, shrubs, and plants, while on the outskirts are 
evergreens, interspersed with silver birches, imitating Nature, who 
often uses them as a foil against evergreen backgrounds, this planting 
forming a natural setting for brilliantly massed azalias, rhododen- 
drons and peonies. 

The sunken garden was developed and embellished as sunken 
gardens generally are, with centred pool, half-circled seats, colonnade, 
pergola, fountain, vase, and statuary. Yew and privet were trimmed 
to the extreme of formalism in cube, cone, oval, pyramid and mound, 
and even in bird and animal forms, and niches cut in the ten foot 
high privet hedge to frame and canopy faun and satyr, Greek god, 
and mythological hero as well as a Cleopatra and a Caesar. 

Arbre-arched foot gates with garniture of bloom pierced the big 
boundary hedges, and tempted the stroller in that fair garden to 
wider wandering through sylvan realms of meadow, dell, and wood, 
threaded by babbling brook and foam-flecked waterfall that faintly 
murmur in the distance. At the horizon line loom the hills. 

An entrance from one side of the living room led to a secluded, 
columned, and arched patio, whose courtyard centre was grass-sown, 
pathed, and shrubbed, save where fountained lily pond partially 
reflected arch, column and tiled roof line. We never transplanted 
weed-filled sod but used grass seed except for path borders, which 
were sodded wide enough for satisfactory use of the ordinary lawn 
mower. 

Two large settles flanked the living room's twin fireplaces, and 
a most comfortable bit of furniture was a big double-sided club 
davenport, with concave end, in which fitted a movable round table 
for books and writing material. Foot wide mirrors in the corners 
to window top height gave no ill-bred, staring reflections, simply 
fleeting glimpses of persons and objects. In fact, in arranging this 
interior we tried to produce that "round the corner" feeling that 
destroys the sense of barrenness felt when every detail of a large 
room is seen at a glance. 

The fluted columns and pilasters were ornamented four or five 
feet from the floor with inset pressed wood in appropriate design. 

Ancestral Portrait Gallery. 

At one side was a long corridor dignified by the term "Ancestral 
Hall," its ceiling slightly groined, and over the portraits of "cavalier 
and ladye faire" were grouped pike, asbolt, hauberk, and cuirass bat- 
tered and slashed in battle before the beginning of our present Ameri- 
can civilization. 

Integral with the living room was the red, quarry-tiled loggia, 
with its chimney corner, settle, and easy chair. As many meals were 
to be eaten in the open it also connected with the serving pantry. 



A NOVEL BOOKSHELF 219 

The music room, carpetless, pictureless, and almost draperyless, 
complying as far as might be with little known acoustic laws, and was 
so placed as to be neither over damp nor over dry, too hot nor too cold 
and instruments were kept away from outside walls. 

Library. 

The tones of the driftwood fire were the keynote to the color- 
ing in the library, and a sense of ease and comfort permeated every 
corner. Books everywhere, with bookcases convenient to the pair 
of big davenports that right-angled the fireplace proclaimed the book 
lover. Over the mantel in burnt wood was traced the sage advice: 
"First think out your work, then work out your thought," one 
corner stone of all accomplishment. The motto habit also invaded 
porch-room, den and billiard room as seen in: "Fait ce que voudrais," 
and "Usted esta en su casa." But of greater interest than all others 
was that ancient Egyptian motto that may have arched the library 
wall of the builder or architect of Cheops — "A storehouse medicine 
of the mind." No mottoes were carved in stone or wood, but 
admitted of change or elimination wdienever tiresome. 

A mezzanine floor at one end of the library, reached by a private 
stair, made the cosiest sort of a writing nook, ventilation being 
accomplished through a chimney flue. 

A Novel Bookshelf. 

Bookshelves built conveniently low allowed pictures hung at eye 
line. They were fitted with narrow, leather flap dust guards. The 
unusual and attractive effect of a long perfectly level and uninter- 
rupted line of books the entire width of the room was obtained by 
the pardonable and harmless lapse in taste of setting back the usual 
four feet apart division supports three inches from the front shelf 
edge, and filling out the space with short dummy leather backed books 
securely fastened in place, harmonizing in color with the genuine. 

The self-locking metal curtains used only at house closing or 
possible leasing times were thoroughly ventilated at top, bottom, and 
sides, to dissipate the moisture attracted by leather. The cupboard 
at the base was wide enough to form a convenient step or ledge, and 
the upper shelf served to hold minor lares and penates. Bookshelf 
area was sufficient to satisfy the most exacting bibliophile. 

Conservatory. 

Conservatory floor and side walls were white-tiled as in Shore 
Rocks to contrast with green foliage, and the basin of the fountain 
held that wonderful water plant, the Victoria Regina, which looks 
like an enormous pancake with turned-up edge. In one corner was a 
leather-cushioned, chain-hung seat, embowered in vines. Slate flower 
benches were held in place by galvanized iron supports, and there 
was a cement rose border. Electrolier and side lights were of non- 



220 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

corrosive glass with pendant prisms, upper window sash of leaded 
glass with a tracery of vines, white tile floor was laid to properly 
drain, and roof framing beams of galvanized iron painted were to 
match trim — preferable in appearance to those of stained, reinforced 
cement. 

Hidden Stair. 

My business office had an outside entrance, and connected with 
the boudoir suite by a hidden stair of quaint design revealed in the 
wainscot on pressure of a secret spring. This stair opened into a 
closet on the floor above, with invisible lock and hinges and secure 
fastenings. 

Detached Fireproof Den. 

Separated from the house by an enclosed tiled court of less than 
a dozen feet in width, but adjoining the office, was a fireproof den 
of iron, cement and terra cotta construction, electrically protected 
at all outlets and with iron barred and shuttered windows. 

Dining Room. 

A dining room of generous size made possible a large breakfast 
bay across whose over beam at entrance was drawn a portiere and 
here knight and ladye sat at a real "round table." The ceiling was 
crossed with six heavy beams and side walls were wainscoted to the 
ceiling in square panels of quartered oak. 

Fruit and game pictures were tabu, but in a light that best 
suited it hung our "Jungfrau." The oak trim was that indefinable 
shade of faded gray made by sand, sun, and wave, as seen in some 
storm-tossed bit of beach wreckage. Two doors connected dining 
room and butler's pantry, each with an inset of six by six inch 
translucent glass, one fitted with rim-protected dish shelves on pantry 
side. Swinging on a pivot, dishes could be swerved to either room, 
and service shelves between pantry and kitchen operated in like 
manner. 

The butler's pantry cupboard had sliding doors with curved 
upper muntins, shelves of varied width and height, with drawers 
beneath the working shelf, and storage lockers to ceiling. The 
radiator was in the form of a shelved plate warmer. 

The Loggia. 

One loggia practically open on three sides had ten glass doors 
which were replaced with screens in summer, a fireplace opening ten 
feet wide, roughly forged and hammered iron andirons, and fire tools 
six feet high. The floor of bricks laid narrow side up in geometrical 
design on a four foot deep tar protected cement foundation suitably 
underdrained sloped toward a manhole. Dry cement was dusted 
between the bricks, and hose turned on it, after which every vestige 
of cement was immediately scrubbed from the surface which was 
then left to dry and harden. 



THE GIANT HEARTHSTONE 221 

A ramp connecting veranda and belvedere was easier to climb 
and far safer at dusk than steps, danger of slipping being eliminated 
by tiling with hard, rough cast, square bricks. 

The Log Cabin. 

At one time it was humorously suggested that we give up the 
modern semi-Dutch kitchen and duplicate that of my grandsire, 
Robert Stewart of Gloucester, Massachusetts, with its hewn beams, 
wide fireplace, crane, trammels, turnspit, and a brick oven in which 
to bake the Beverly beans. The scheme was finally relegated to the 
log cabin built on one of the outlying crags of Pinnacle. Motoring 
to Haverhill, we took the measurements of the kitchen in the old 
Whittier homestead, practically a duplicate of grandfather Stewart's. 

And "lest we forget," just a word about that log cabin built in 
Brobdignagian proportions. There we reveled in old-fashioned what- 
nots, lowboys and tallboys, bouldered stone fireplaces, and "sich." 
For an armoire we used the trunk of horse hair with drawers in 
the front and brass nails on top, proclaiming the fact that my great- 
great grandfather labeled it in 1708 — probably just before some 
momentous and much-talked of thirty-mile stage trip to Boston town. 

On the hand-wrought nails in rough-hewn beams of this log 
cabin hung seed popcorn and red peppers, matchlock and powder 
horn. Where the logs of which it was built showed on the interior 
they were peeled and varnished — a vandal act, I grant, but worms 
and woodtick intruders must be banished. For a door-step we took 
from the house of this same forbear the stone threshold on which 
the Indians once sharpened their scalping knives. Needless to say the 
massacre did not materialize, or Pinnacle might never have been built. 

The Dutch door had a big clumsy ten inch keyed lock, in size 
rivaling that of the Bastile, and mid-way in the upper half a welcom- 
ing, bright, brass knocker, just below an antique bull's eye. 

The Giant Hearthstone. 

That hearthstone was the pride of our hearts. We once built 
a house simply to specialize big bouldered stone twin chimneys, and 
the log cabin was located to specialize the biggest hearthstone in the 
State. Glacial action had worn fairly smooth a rock eighteen feet 
wide and twelve feet across, and our Jimmy, as constant as the 
''Northern Star," jimmied off with wedge and sledge all protuber- 
ances and smoothed its edges until the cabin floor fitted closely against 
it. We relinquished a finer view to capture that hearthstone, placed 
for us by Dame Nature when the world was young. A dozen modern 
fire-worshippers could easily half-circle the blazing logs. 

The well hole over the big living room extended to the roof 
and a half dozen bedrooms led from a gallery. Each side of the 
big chimney, the corridor being closed at this end, were roughly 
made iron banded shutters that generally stood open, and gave a 



222 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

pioneer block house aspect to our cabin, a bit suggestive of the squint- 
eye window of a Saxon hall. 

Flambeau Fireplace. 

The log cabin chimney had not only a giant hearthstone, but a 
flambeau fireplace. A separate flue built above the stone mantel, and 
the fire barriered by a heavy iron grilled front, was a quaint conceit 
that never grew tiresome, as quaint conceits often do. Those were 
never-to-be-forgotten days when our big flashing wall candle of pitch 
pine knots, a relic of mediaeval times, fitfully threw weird shadows 
to the deepest recesses of vaulted hall, over banquet board and merry 
dancers. An iron floor grate increased the up-draught and safely dis- 
posed of ashes in a clean-out pocket. 

At one end of our imitation of a Saxon-thayne timbered hall 
a dais not only served for a dining room platform but made a fine 
view point from which to take in the goodly proportions and distinc- 
tive features of the big hall. From it opened a door to an old Saxon 
bower room and at one side a Dutch door led to pantry and kitchen. 
A cedar-railed staircase crossed one end of the high raftered hall 
above the front door, and trailed upward to the lookout on the roof, 
stopping at the first corridor to land and receive passengers. We 
even essayed to trim the den with weather-beaten wood, but it soon 
grew monotonous, and caught both dust and clothing. 

Beneath the unplastered shingle roof were extra sleeping 
rooms. When the cares of the big house with its guests and ser- 
vants made nervous prostration imminent, the log cabin was a most 
delightful retreat and on cool fall nights the patter of raindrops on 
its shingle roof as rhythmical as that purling brook of the poet, that 
"goes on forever," lulled us to sleep in its prophet's chamber. In an 
inner sanctum of that same garret where we treasured what time 
had yellowed and odored, a fagged out, ennuied present drew inspira- 
tion from an angular, puritanical past. 

One interesting mantel was of gray weather-beaten boards and 
fence posts, over-mantel decorated with berry-laden branches, the 
whole copied from a scheme worked out by some artist friends. 

A White Kitchen. 

Returning from the detour to the log cabin let us re-enter Pin- 
nacle by way of the white kitchen — yes, woodwork and doors enam- 
eled white and floor and walls white tiled, with ceiling of metal 
nailed over the plastering, — a room that could be easily hosed, or, as 
the English housewife has it, "swilled." Cooking utensils were 
mostly of aluminum, and hung in plain sight, so that their condition 
could be seen at a glance. 

In the centre of the room stood a large cooking table, with 
adjustable soapstone top, preferable to marble, as it can be planed 
smooth whenever worn, leaving no scratch wherein the elusive 



ELIMINATING KITCHEN ODORS 223 

microbe may hide. It was fitted with curved drawers and a metal 
framework with hooks for cooking utensils. 

The range, a combination coal, gas, and electric, with a glass 
hood, kept this important corner light and wholesome. Pressure 
of a button operated a fan in the ventilating Hue, sending all odors 
within twenty feet skyward. Another Hue at ceiling height captured 
any escapes. On the range was a thermometer and under it an ash 
Hue. In another house the range connected by metal tube with a 
cellar metal ash barrel. A tight fitting collar joint and duplicate 
ash can made the scheme a success. 

A copper boiler connected with the range by brass piping had 
in spite of plumbers' ridicule a safety valve, as well as mud cocks, 
and when careless cooks set it to hammering we listened with calm 
complacency. We found copper boilers heated water in record time. 

A gas heating appliance Htted to the range boiler means less 
danger to health than when used in the confined space of a bathroom.* 
There was also a hot water heater in the basement. 

The enameled steel built-in kitchen cabinet was easily hosed. 

Chimney breast w r e faced with wdiite enamel brick, and 
against the wall over the range hung a metal box in which to keep 
floor cloths, scrub brushes, etc. With pipe ventilation into the chim- 
ney, they were always dry, clean, and odorless. A gas garbage 
incinerator fed its fumes into the chimney flue. 

Sinks were seamless porcelain, broad and deep to curtail break- 
age, and set six inches higher than usual, saving many a backache, 
and a silent protest to the manufacturer who, in order to place sinks 
under window sills, invariably makes them too low for comfort. We 
also used the hotel device for dish washing, eliminating the insanitary 
dish towel, as well as economizing time. 

A grease trap under the kitchen sink not only saved soap grease 
but helped to prevent clogged pipes. 

Eliminating Kitchen Odors. 

In Pinnacle was completely solved one bete noir of housekeepers, 
kitchen odors, which were absolutely controlled not only by means 
of a glass hood, electric up-chimney fan and two widely separated 
doors in butler's pantry, but by a narrow passage between it and the 
kitchen with low funnel-shaped ceiling beginning at door top and 
centreing an electrically fanned flue leading into an exceptionally 
large ventilating chimney flue holding in its centre by crossed irons 
the tiled range flue. The air lifting brick chamber did yeoman work 
in kitchen, billiard room and bathroom, and was largely responsible 
for our free-from-odor-house, while the funnel-ceilinged corridor was 
the court of last resort for kitchen odors from which there was no 
other appeal. 



-Deoxidized air unde,r the above conditions recently caused the death of one who did not 
know the danger. 



224 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

\ 

The refrigerator room served also as a cold storage room, with 
packed sawdust doors as well as sides, and we had our own hygeia 
ice plant. One cake of ice would answer all the year though renew- 
als are desirable, but in the event of needing ice it was delivered 
directly into the built-in refrigerator through a door opening from 
a small side porch. Drainage pipe whose end connected with a 
cement surface gutter was screened with copper wire. Pipe was left 
six inches above ground. A small alcove cupboard on side porch 
served for use of milkman and grocer. 

Vermin-proof Store Room. 

This cold storage room was made rat and vermin-proof by gal- 
vanized one-quarter inch mesh laid over floors, side walls, and ceiling, 
and set in the cement. 

Basement Rooms. 

As the house was side-hilled, laundry, servants' dining room 
and servants' hall were above ground, avoiding a dark unhealthy 
basement. Laundry equipment included porcelain washtubs with 
non-projecting faucets, electric washers, mangles, etc., and a drying 
machine in an adjoining room. 

Wire screens shielding both laundry and some kitchen windows 
were the impossible old-fashioned slate colored landscape design. 

Servants' dining room was separated from laundry by columns 
and grilles, and a wooden floor laid over the cement foundation with 
the help of enamel and spar varnish finish wood work made the word 
"basement" a misnomer. 

Cellar. 

The cellar was tarred and cemented to exclude ground air and 
dampness, walls murescoed, separate rooms brick partitioned and 
provided with thorough ventilation, and the entire floor drained to 
a water-sealed manhole. All corners were concaved to the ceiling 
line with cement. Ceiling was wire lathed and plastered and covered 
with metal to reduce noise, dust, and fire risk. Footings were rough 
stone, capped with flat blue stone, brick if soft often deteriorating 
under ground. 

Here was also a housekeeping closet with broad windows and 
a set of old fashioned hanging shelves of non-rusting enameled steel, 
and a dark cool preserve closet with spring lock, on the north. 

Coal bins, brick partitioned, with cement floors and sides, had 
automatic chute delivery, a shovel of coal taking the place of the one 
removed. Bins were next to boiler, and the scuttle entrance so 
arranged that coal delivery did not injure the lawn. 

A fireproof brick vault — brick being our best fire resister — with 
metal shelf partitions and pigeon holes encased in asbestos — was built 
in a corner of the cellar to protect papers hardly valuable enough to 



THE G [EST STAIR 225 

keep in the liquid explosive-proof safety vault built in the foundation 
arch of the chimney, but whose loss would he inconvenient. 

All cellar windows were large and had step-down areas with 
self-draining blind ditch outlets. Iron gratings and non-corroding 
wire screens at all cellar windows effectually barred burglar, bug, 
and rodent, and allowed frequent and thorough ventilation. 

Cellar woodwork, which consisted only of window frames and 
stairs, was painted white and spar varnished, and several ribbed glass 
reflectors increasing the light threefold swung within in front of 
area windows. The mixture of white marble dust in cement floor and 
sides and white water paint applied to ceiling made the basement 
exceptionally light. The white patent cement floor was as easily 
cleaned as tile. 

Bowling Alley. 

The bowling alley under the high veranda platform with glassed-in 
front, reached by cement steps from both verdure shielded porch room 
and belvedere, was finished before we heard of the Italian damp-proof 
glass-floored alleys which neither warp nor sag. It was the regula- 
tion eighty-three foot length with low return groove and loop-the- 
loop return rack. 

Our elastic basement accommodated also the gymnasium, 
Turkish bath, and swimming pool, the walls of the latter finished 
with scagliola, and water inlet safeguarded as far as possible from 
germs by an hygienic filter. Here also was the tool room, with 
electric forge and lathe. On rainy days that basement was something 
of a beehive. 

The main stairway centreing our big staircase hall led to a mid- 
height platform lighted by a window of stained glass, while a short 
flight of stairs connected with the floor above. 

The Guest Stair. 

The awkward predicament of arriving and departing guests 
mingling on the staircase with those in full dress was obviated by 
the following simple plan: The stairway twelve feet wide, divided 
by a movable rod and curtain into two separate flights, one eight feet 
and a narrower four-foot flight against the wall. This temporarily 
screened stair corridor reached by a private paneled door in the 
grilled and wainscoted partition which separated the entrance hall 
from the staircase hall admirably served its purpose — a private 
stair connected with the entrance hall is open to the objection that 
val uable space would be permanently taken from the broad stair- 
case and second story thieves or undesirable callers could readily gain 
the upper floors undetected. The twelve foot wide stairway allowed 
plant decoration its entire length. Tall palms guarded from a mis- 
step. 

The squared staircase hall and the arched and pillared second- 
floor hall corridor, in a measure an upstairs sitting room with fireplace, 



226 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

and also reached by an electric elevator, are thus intertied, and form 
unusual features. 

Checkmating the Burglar. 

As extra protection from the midnight prowler we enclosed the 
main stair well at night with flexible metal folding gates used later- 
ally and concealed in side pockets inset in columns, hoisted into the 
ceiling beams or lowered within a solid surfaced balustrade would prob- 
ably have been better. It is practically impossible for these gates to 
get out of order, but in case they do, ample means of egress are afforded 
by balconies and fire ropes. With this arrangement no intruder 
entering the first floor or basement could gain access to the floors 
above, as the back stairs were enclosed to form ample protection in 
that quarter. Thus barred, the watchdog, kept on the second floor, 
w T as secure from cajolery. Burglar-proof mortise bolts protected each 
bedroom and were inset above the reach of childish hands. 

A frontiersman gave me the idea of secreting a revolver in a 
leather pocket nailed against the back of a picture within easy reach 
of the bed, less dangerous than the under-the-pillow plan. 

Fire and Burglar Battling. 

Fire ropes of flexible wire, with swinging safety seats, are 
coiled in each outdoor bedroom, but two distinctly separate flights 
of stairs and the ready exit given by balconies and sun-bathed outdoor 
bedrooms practically eliminate all fire risk to life and limb, especially 
as the conning tower surmounted with a clerestory lookout is in 
reality a narrow brick windowed shaft centred with an engine house 
sliding pole and reached through fireproof doors from each landing, 
the openings rail protected. 

High under the eaves connected with the owner's suite, was 
fastened a loud clanging gong to call the farmer and his assistants in 
case of fire or burglary. This, with an electric switch turning on 
in an instant every light in the house, and a couple of good dogs 
one within the house and one without, seems preferable to a care- 
lessly handled burglar alarm with its unnecessary "wee sma' hour" 
bone-chilling surprises or the percussion cap window fastening, one 
of many precautionary devices. 

The Arch. 

At the head of the first story stairs is a double arch, one forming 
a hall division ; the other, directly back of it, leading to the third 
story stairs. The effect of these with the corridor arches on the 
same floor, is called particularly pleasing. Enthusiasm for beauty 
as expressed in the arch leads one back through the centuries to that 
first arch in active service in the world, the famous Cloaca Maxima 
round headed Roman-arch doing humble sewer duty in the Eternal 
City on the Tiber, 2,400 years ago, and even today in active service, 
that arch sprung over a dozen centuries before the Incas ignorantly 



FIRE AND BURGLAR BATTLING 227 

built their substitute peaked and narrow lintels over wide thresholds. 

Bedrooms. 

On this second Moor are spacious boudoir, morning and sleep- 
ing rooms with many windows. In one suite double doors were 
used enlarging the room. Many bedrooms have two exposures, 
preferably south and west, cooler in summer, warmer in winter, 
bays and projections aiding materially in the accomplishment of 
this purpose, at the same time improving the exterior of the 
house. Most masters' bedrooms are large enough for two couches, 
one paralleling the foot of the bed, the other fronting the fireplace 
which is almost as much a feature of each main bedroom as are the 
windows. 
The Wall and Fireplace Jewel Safe. 

In the larger bedrooms are small steel safes set in cement and 
riveted between wall studs, kept plumb and solid by an iron pipe, 
and concealed by pictures. One fireplace and hearth on the second 
story is large and strong enough to hold a silver safe electrically pro- 
tected, its front concealed by a brass grilled register face with invisible 
hinge and lock. 

In the second story hall is a quaint little staircase of a half-dozen 
steps, the treads covered w T ith red carpet held by brass rods. 
Beneath are bookshelves. The stairs lead to a boudoir guest suite, 
consisting of centre sitting room, two bedrooms and bath closet. 
Casement leaded windows of translucent glass swing open into the 
hall, assisting in its lighting, and make another of the motifs linking 
these three halls. Owing to the extreme height of entrance hall 
directly below, the casements of this low studded room necessarily 
open close to the floor, and require metal guard rails. All guest 
rooms are fitted with writing desks complete in every detail. In one 
the bed is placed on a dais with rounded corners in pillared and 
windowed alcove. When portieres are drawn the room assumes the 
air of a boudoir. In another is a shallow wall recess wide enough 
to accommodate bed heads and draped by a canopy. This arrange- 
ment gives excellent closets each side of the alcove. All masters' 
sleeping rooms have additional blind doors. 

A friend motoring through southern France noted that at a 
quaint farm house where he stopped the bed linen was kept in drawers 
inset over the fireplace, a custom that could hardly be copied in 
some American-built houses without a visit from the fire insurance 
adjuster. 

The Sunshine Room and Sun-Bath-Room. 

In planning we did not forget the sun room, which communi- 
cated with one main bedroom and the hall. With its wicker furni- 
ture, bright cushions, rugs, singing birds and plants, it metamorphosed 
January into June. The sun bathroom had a large south window 
and a roof skylight. A tiny fireplace hugged the wall and a mat- 



228 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

tress hammock swung in the sunlight. Closely allied in comfort, 
though comfort of a different kind, were the outdoor bedrooms or 
sleeping porches. Their entire fronts opened to the south, with the 
additional protection of hinged glass windows as storm warders and 
screens in summer. One window set low and over weighted was 
raised by pressing a button and a timid sleeper could roll on to the 
couch set against it in the main bedroom. On the protected sides 
of these outdoor bedrooms each alternate window was high, leaving 
space beneath for dressing table or chiffonier. We cut away a por- 
tion of the floor of one sleeping porch to admit the trunk of a lofty 
maple and trained its branches across the south front making a 
veritable tree-top room. 

North light was selected for the bird's-eye maple room, as strong 
sunlight fades its delicate silvery beauty to a dingy yellow. Floor, 
trim, doors, settle, mantel and furniture are all of selected bird's-eye 
maple. 

The Children's Play Room. 

The children's play room and the nursery were somewhat 
isolated and floors deadened. They had indestructible cement walls, 
wooden floors, and frieze, wall, and dado in pictured story which 
could be varied from time to time. On the high vaulted ceiling was 
outlined a chart of the star-studded winter sky. A door panel held 
an explanatory key. Windows extended to ceiling line, were not 
over low, and rail barred. 

At the east side of the second floor hall sitting room, stairs led 
to the third floor, and on the fourth were rooms typifying Japan, 
China, and Spain, while American Indian life was exhaustively por- 
trayed. 

Cedar Closets and Window Seats. 

On this floor was built a real cedar closet — the variety of cedar 
that holds its odor, rarely found in the lumber yard, but cut for us 
in the woods. Its next door neighbor was a shelved and drawered 
napery containing an inner shelved closet with double Victorian 
folding doors seven feet high. 

Invisible Doors and Secret Closets. 

Panels in several rooms served the purpose of doors, using invis- 
ible hinge and lock, much less disfiguring to the room ; passageways 
leading from others were paneled, the broad panels opening into 
deep closets fitted with dress rods, hat fixtures, and partitioned shelves 
and drawers. A ten inch wide shoe shelf set six inches from the floor 
and extending on two sides of the closet is concealed in several 
instances by a rolltop arrangement similar to that used on desks. 
Sets of drawers were built into the sides of the chimney jog in some 
of the bedrooms, also closets fitted for men's apparel, and after the 
carpenters had left it was surprising how easily some secret closets 



PASSING OF THE INSECT PEST 229 

were planned and constructed known only to myself — in fact, the 
dress and diamond smuggler with his false bottom trunks can be easily 
outdone by the home builder. False backs in some dressers and 
chiffoniers slid upward, revealing a secret space some four inches deep 
occupied by removable plush covered shelves for jewelry and other 
small articles of value. 

The Secret Room. 

My chef d'oeuvre was a secret room five by eight with nine foot 
ceiling, entered by a concealed door whose location has so far defied 
the most observing. 

Developing Room. 

Magazine pokeholes were under the stairway and eaves. In the 
third story a developing room well ventilated by an up-chimney 
electric fan was fitted with porcelain sink, hot and cold water, and 
other conveniences. Its side walls and door were inset with colored 
glass. A porch room closet taken from a jog siding the parlor chim- 
ney conveniently held, under lock and key, wraps, toys, books, and 
sewing. 
Toggery Closet. 

Profiting by the experience of a friend whose plates and films, 
valued at thousands of dollars, stored in a closet under a bathroom, 
were ruined by the thawing of a frozen water pipe, we kept toggery 
such as fishing tackle, guns, camera plates, etc., in a Yale locked attic 
closet, building over the plate and film shelf as extra protection a 
water-proof metal hood. Our rarest plates and films however were 
pigeon-holed in the fire and damp-proof vault. Exposed rafters in 
the closet were fitted with hooks, nails, and shelves. 

Passing of the Insect Pest. 

Windows wherever possible were in all closets, and electric ceil- 
ing lights operated by switch just inside the closet door. Cord hung 
bulbs were conveniently placed for peering into any especially dark 
corners. Closet walls and ceilings had three coats of paint and a 
finish of spar varnish enabled them to stand occasional washing. 
Instead of baseboards, cement walls extended to the floor, with a 
sanitary curve in place of the usual right angle. Floors of patent 
cement that does not crumble and can be kept clean made closets 
insect proof and easily hosed. Hack halls and all servants' rooms were 
treated in like manner. 

Metal Clothes Chute. 

'I he clothes chute of non-rusting aluminum connected with the 
laundry closet with snap lock and was thoroughly ventilated by wire 
screens extending two feet downward from the ceiling following the 
closet wall line, with a wired opening at the base. Doors opened to 
the chute from each floor. 



230 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Yacht Room. 

The yacht room duplicated the stateroom of a cruiser in berth, 
locker, dead-lights, and even hardware, and was a favorite rendez- 
vous for land sailors as well as a boy's paradise. 

Morning Room. 

For real inspiration there is nothing like a morning room facing 
the east, where one can see the rising sun filled with the promise 
of a busy day. It had long been my dream, and in Pinnacle was 
worked into reality, being simply furnished for reading, writing and 
lounging. 

Mirror Doors and Mirrors. 

On the same floor was the sewing room, fitted with electric 
sewing machines, latest pressing equipment, and several triplicate 
mirrors and mirror doors, the latter so hung here and in bedrooms 
that when open mirrors w r ere opposite, a third in some instances set 
between them in side walls. In one room the door mirror divided 
into small squares, and in another curved wooden muntins were used. 
There were mirrors on stair landings, at the ends of rooms, between 
columns, over door heads — even in the space between the trim sid- 
ing two windows, in this case having carved, interlaced muntins across 
the face. 

Mirage Rooms. 

Several unframed vista mirrors cutting through baseboards to 
the floor extended the apparent size of our rooms indefinitely, espe- 
cially after lights were turned on — a scheme made more effective by 
filling the entire space between two openings with a mirror and con- 
cealing side and head trim with portieres. A friend christened these 
unwalled illusion rooms m'irage rooms. 

Bath Closets and Bathrooms. 

That in which today even tenement life revels, the comfy of 
the tub, was practically unknown to mediaeval England. Both thane 
and yokel, in the crudeness of the times, made their advent and exit 
without it. 

Most masters' bedrooms either connected with bath or the sub- 
stitute bath closet, wherein the entire floor space is occupied by the 
tub, fitted with shower and long swivel faucets reaching close to the 
front, forming both wash basin and tub. As these closets adjoined 
bathrooms, very little extra piping was required. A glass fronted water 
tight niche protected the electric light. Our preference was for the 
completely enameled steel tub, rather than solid porcelain which when 
filled with water weighs over a ton and absorbs much of the heat. 
Two set twelve inches below floor line were safely railed in, the 
extra depth required taken from the room beneath, in one case a 
closet, in the other a butler's pantry. By the use of square end six 



MIRAGE ROOMS 231 

foot tubs with high overflow) we proved that no house is complete 
without such a tub and a porcelain tub tour feet square and fourteen 
inches deep having overflow twice the size of inlet was especially 

installed for children. 

Bathrooms had cork mats in brass edged insets, showers with 
sprinkler and needle attachments protected by plate glass and odorless 
canvas in preference to a rubber curtain, white enamel scales, mirrored 
medicine cabinets set between the studs and several shallow closets 
partially inset in the walls in the same way. Extra ventilation in 
some cases was secured by fireplaces, also registers at base line con- 
necting with the outer air. Tubs were lifted with rubber mats and 
hanging seats. Nickel plated lire irons matched the plumbing. 

A third story bathroom was tiled with sheets of cream white 
i^lass four feet square, and the same material made an excellent 
shower shield. 

Electric Light in Chimney for Ventilation. 

My physician always kept a Lighted gas jet in one chimney Hue, 
but we found an electric heater safer, more easily controlled, and 
it warmed the air sufficiently for free circulation. An electric bath 
cabinet, shampoo fixtures, sit/ baths and bidets completed the bath- 
room comforts. 

Sanitary Angle Toilet. 

In the basement was a sanitary angle toilet. Bathroom hard- 
ware matched plumbing and li;j;htimj: fixtures, and high leaded win- 
dows added much to, and thoroughly screened these rooms. Where 
two doors entered a bathroom, opening one electrically closed the 
other. In one or two a high Hush tank and pipe were concealed in 
a near by closet, but the low white porcelain tank was generally 
installed, as it is more easily inspected and kept in order. Later 
all tanks were omitted in favor of the stop valve. Over the toilet 
was a chair with hinged cane seat. In several cases toilet and bath 
were placed in separate rooms. Barreled ceilings were used in two 
bathrooms and in another an electrically lighted, stained ^lass elliptic 
Canopj where the domed ceiling centred over head. This, with 
Pompeiian wall treatment and growing plants, made a luxurious 
bathroom. 

Gold-plated bathroom fixtures never tarnish, are most effective 
against a white background, add in appearance far more than their 
cost, and should be one of the features of a (me house. One master's 
bathroom was thus fitted, and in Others expense was curtailed by usiiiLZ 
white enamel tipped with gold plate. 

Glass was found satisfactory tor the tops of dressing tables 
desks, towel racks, shelves, set basin supports ami shaving shelves. 
Several shaving jons were built between two small windows, and 
fitted with triplicate mirrors and electric lights, and dressing tables 
in several rooms treated in like manner. 



232 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Overflow pipes in all fixtures were sufficiently large to quickly 
carry off the output of both faucets, and are important provisions. 
Trouble from stoppage is farther minimized by placing a porcelain 
safe under the housemaid's sink. 

An inflowing pipe from the bottom of the bath makes it less 
convenient to ascertain temperature of the water or bathe injuries 
but has the advantage of being noiseless and preventing servants from 
drawing water in the bathroom. Most tubs were fitted with the 
single combination faucet, furnishing water of any temperature. 

Plumbing Shut-offs. 

Shut-offs for each and all fixtures were grouped in one easily 
reached place and legibly and permanently labeled. 

The use of wood pulp plaster throughout the house helped to 
prevent falling ceilings caused by sudden jars or leaking water pipes. 

Coal Saving. 

In one of our cheaper houses we adopted the plan of having a 
galvanized iron flue for the furnace enter the chimney near roof line 
by way of back hall well hole, protected at floors and partitions by 
soapstone collars. It is a great house warmer and coal saver and is 
doing excellent work after twenty years' service. 

Fireplaces from Ripon Abbey to Venice. 

We now come to the soul of Pinnacle, for it has been aptly said 
that "as the windows of a house are its eyes, (and the patio its heart) 
so is the open fire its soul ; the only physical matter therein that 
leaps and darts, quivers and curls ; the quick and subtle spirit Pro- 
metheus lured from heaven to soothe and civilize mankind." The 
glow of burning wood brightened the living room, which had a fire- 
place at either end, while entrance hall's open mouthed log burner 
was ten feet wide. In fact, every main room except the dining 
room had its soul, but the dust-gathering stone affair was omitted 
except in the glass-enclosed porch room fitted with suitable radiators. 

In a side porch storm windows lowered into an opening in 
the shingled railing, and the windy side of a west veranda was pro- 
tected but unshadowed by a large sheet of framed plate glass extend- 
ing from settle to porch roof securely screwed into place and remov- 
able in summer. 

Feudal Fireplace. 

Our 20 x 30 foot studio with its beamed ceiling following the 
roof line to its highest peak was centred by a triangular chimney 
with three fireplace openings, one on each side, inspired by a chim- 
ney in the Tiffany house, a fireplace at which one could imagine 
feudalism warming itself over a handful of blazing faggots in some 
flambeau lighted, vaulted hall of those fortressed homes of the past. 



FIREPLACES— RIPOX ABBEY TO PENICE 233 

Mantel mirrors were barred as reflecting generally the unin- 
teresting back of a clock. We substituted tinted plaster casts, 
leaded glass cabinets, burnt wood designs and paintings, and in the 
library mantel face set a circular clock taken from grandfather's 
town house library, where it had faithfully ticked through the lives 
of the household for over fifty years. One over mantel was brick- 
hooded, one faced with copper, one with plush and still another 
in tooled leather on which was inscribed the Stewart coat of arms 
in shimmering silver. One fire back or reredos was iron, embossed 
with a coat of arms, others of fire brick in varied hue and one of 
cement criss-crossed with black headed nails. There were Norman 
and Pompeiian mantels, with full recognition given to the line of 
Louis, while Egypt, that land of heat and hieroglyphics, was repre- 
sented by a mantel front modeled from crude tracings gleaned from 
Thebes. A black grottoed fireplace became a real grotto of rocks 
and ferns in summer, while another held one of those big shells from 
the Orient, on whose white lip was painted a yacht race. 

Hobs in the hall fireplace suggested the days when they served 
to hold kettles, etc., while a Dutch chimney and mantel and narrow 
leather cushioned seats at each end of the fender top gave a home- 
like air to the den. 

Tiles in billiard room chimney breast represented windmills and 
quaintly rigged luggers. 

We had always craved the antipodal in fireplaces — one as broad 
as that in Ripon Abbey and another as narrow and peaked as convex 
copper hood could make it and still keep the semblance of a fireplace. 
Lack of space dwarfed the former, but the latter played its part 
rarely well. Mantel breasts were carried to ceiling height and 
treated in tile, copper, or brass. In front of one fireplace was inserted 
a metal framed sheet of thick plate glass which served to extend one's 
view of the leaping flames. Break? No; not if fire-tested and cor- 
rectly set. 

Some mantel shelves were placed very low ; others correspond- 
ingly high — one, a couple of feet from the ceiling line and boxed in 
two feet in width, another barely three feet above the floor level and 
supported by caryatides ; others lined with the window or door cap- 
pings. In the drawing room was an onyx hearth and mantel-face 
with gilded shelf and brass andirons, fender and fire tools. A trolley 
rail we found just the thing to firmly support level headed fire open- 
ings, and where flue space in chimney permitted the fireplace con- 
nected with an ash flue, leading to an ash pit in the cellar. 

Reluctantly it was decided to omit the fireplace in dining room, 
though crackling flames add much to good cheer, for, unless this 
room is unusually large, someone is sure to be made uncomfortable. 

A throated mantel hood was constructed in the billiard room by 
buleing out the side wall when the room was plastered. It harmon- 



234 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

ized better with the decorations than the red brick mantel originally 
purchased for this room. The ceiling was treated in Pompeiian red, 
crossed by black beams, and side walls wainscoted below a stenciled 
frieze. One window seat was regulation billiard room height, with 
foot rest, the w T indow guard-railed. Step-up window treatment, 
giving both side settles and enlarged view, we adopted in several 
attic rooms. 

For the convenience of those who did not care to climb, an 
extra billiard table was placed in an alcove of the den on the cool 
side of the house. 

The chimney flue in the billiard room and an electric up-chim- 
ney fan joined forces against the smokers to prevent the nicotine-laden 
air from permeating the house. If a chimney is built on correct 
lines, the "help draw" ugly chimney pot is a useless addition. When 
the fireplace opening was extremely high, as an additional aid the 
chimney was split in two at and above the ridge. Windows were all 
on one side, avoiding cross lights which, with overhead skylight, 
made it an ideal billiard room, a trifle larger than the usual eighteen 
by twenty-four feet, its walls, as well as those of the studio, sand 
finished to better admit of mural stencil decoration. 

A Feasible Lookout Room, a Real Clerestory. 

Standing on a commanding peak in the Tyrol, one hears in the 
distant valley the tinkle of cow bells and from the village steeple 
the call to prayer and service — the only sounds that break the 
Sabbath stillness. As I thus stood one morning I determined to 
sometime have a home that would remind me of that fair spot, one 
where the Sabbath stillness, if desired, could last half through the 
week. From this wish of mine, or rather because of it, was evolved 
our lookout room, a real clerestory, compassing a magnificent view, 
and proving a fair substitute for that Alpine air castle. It was a 
homelike lounging and reading room of generous size, with fireplace 
and conveniently low book-shelves beneath the windows, protected 
from storm by a broad ledge. There were high ventilators near 
plate line, a wide overhang, awnings, and electric fans to cool the 
air of this glass-walled room — ideal comfort thus fashioned from the 
usual glaring discomfort of the average lookout room. Here big 
davenports vied with mattress-fitted, chain-hung hammocks. 

The dome, reached by a narrow iron stairway, arched an iron- 
grated platform on which was mounted a Clark telescope for sky- 
ranging and man-bird seeking. 

Floors. 

Hardwood floors of oak, red birch and maple were finished in 
wax, remembering in caring for them that wax and water clash. 
Parquetry borders, but of />« stuff, were used throughout the house. 
We found that even the smaller rooms lost but little in size if borders 



PNEUMONIA PREVENTION 235 

were not of strongly contrasting color. Plain white maple lacked 
character and easily soiled ; selected grain was used in preference. 

All closet doors were hung to open outward and exterior and 
interior doors featured to fit their belongings. In some cases a 
portiere more conveniently screened hall alcove and clothes press. 
Baseboards were preferably set on the under floor and the joint con- 
cealed with convex sweeping moldings. It decreased their height but 
made a better job. 

Built-in drawers were not as a rule exasperatingly deep, and 
were on rollers operating on centre guide strips. Inside stops guarded 
incautious handlers from catastrophes apt to occur to incautious 
handlers of heavily laden drawers. 

Small rubber plugs were set in as well as air check valves affixed 
to door frames, especially when doors were glass, behind them the 
regulation door stop, and rubber and metal tipping of heavy furni- 
ture saved both nerves and floor. 

Hardware. 

Black iron was the motif in the den hardware, and Colonial 
polished brass wherever suited to the room. 

The small brass drop proved a fine escutcheon, and a few bead- 
edged brass finger plates were souvenired from grandfather's Colonial 
house where we all ran rampant, especially on holidays. Some 
doors had square or oval glass knobs, and porcelain rather than 
insanitary wood was used in servants' quarters. Lacquered hardware 
in door knob and handle soon w r ore off, while polished brass and 
glass stood all friction tests, but there was no tiresome uniformity in 
lock, bolt, hinge, escutcheon, window fastening and lift, drawer pull 
and knob, silver and gold plate, as well as aluminum being also used, 
the two latter with immense advantage to the ivoodiiork, as they re- 
quire no cleaning. French casements were fitted with the Cremorne 
bolt or espagnolette fastening reaching the full length of the window. 
It rarely gets out of order, and secures both top and bottom with one 
wrist movement. Butler's pantry doors had the usual double action 
butt, and mortise locks prevented the use of thin closet doors. The 
ugly, commercial looking transom adjuster was replaced with a con- 
cealed wall fixture. 

A key cabinet held duplicate labeled keys of important rooms 
and outbuildings, and was securely locked. 

Pneumonia Prevention. 

At ceiling height on each floor ventilators connected with a pipe 
leading into the brick chamber surrounding the range chimnev tile 
flue, which, being generally hot, drew fumes and odors upward. 
This, with the influx of cool outer air through controlled ventilators 
at two outer door-sills and under several windows, effectually ban- 
ished the usual steam-pipe pneumonia-conducing atmosphere that 



236 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

sponsors half our winter ills. With thermostats in each room there 
was no excuse for over heating. 

Asbestos (earth flax) and mineral wool, i. e., slag treated with 
steam until it looks like spun glass, were used wherever there was 
danger of a charred timber or the annoying sound of running water. 
One cellar ceiling was covered with sheets of asbestos, later painted 
to cover joints. 
The Heating Plant. 

It's a long span from the hypocaust used by ancient Rome to 
heat its public baths to the modern steam or hot water plant, but 
present heating methods trace backward to the luxurious Roman. 

Our heating system was direct and indirect radiation, insuring a 
constant supply of fresh air. By using half of the double firebox and 
cutting off certain radiators the expense and care were reduced one- 
third. The heating plant in the cellar of the gardener's cottage 
connected with main house by underground asbestos-covered iron 
pipes which kept the house free from coal dust, furnace noise, and 
ashes. A metal shield was suspended from the ceiling over the 
furnace. 

The Ugly Radiator. 

Radiators were concealed in niches, alcoves, behind metal grilles, 
and in window seats, but never where they could not receive a free 
circulation of air, and grilles hinged to open in extremely cold weather 
created swifter hot air currents. Enclosed radiators require gen- 
erally from twenty-five to forty-five per cent more radiating surface. 

Radiators in the hall were concealed in alcove seats, hidden by 
silk fringe, and stair risers perforated and connected by ventilating 
pipes with boxed-in radiators. Wall radiators enameled or painted 
with heat-proof paint to match the trim were used in bathrooms, no 
impudent silver or gilt monstrosities stared at one in Pinnacle. 

One big and ugly radiator installed in the cellar had special 
air duct within and without, but its inlet was through the 
side wall, rather than from an insanitary floor opening, and in a 
clearance instead of behind a door. Those concealed in settles were 
set six inches from window sills, this space, as well as the seat 
front, being metal screened. 

Electric Lighting. 

Considerations of safety, as well as ease in repairing broken 
wires, led to installation of the iron pipe system, in which every wire 
is under absolute control. If new wires are needed they can be 
readily drawn through the pipes. Outbuildings were equipped with 
the cable system and exterior telephone and electric damp-proof wires 
wherever possible buried in underground pipes. 

Great care was taken that no electric wires on the grounds were 
fastened about a parent stem or main branch ; if necessary to place 
a wire against a tree, it was protected by a wooden block. Many a 



ELECTRIC LIGHTING 237 

forest monarch lias withered ami died by a short circuited current, 
or simply through a wire stay embedded in the growing tree, cutting 
off the Life-giving sap. The hour-glass moves swiftly in the horticul- 
tural world. 

Electric Fixtures. 

No one item for its cost can make or mar a house more than 
the electric light fixtures. From the time when King Alfred first 
encircled the snuffed-out candle with a metal shield to the present 
day, the lantern has heen a decorative adjunct. We swung in the 
centre of our twenty-five foot hall ceiling a ponderous, electrically 
lighted cathedral lantern seven feet high and few features in Pin- 
nacle attracted more attention than that christened King Alfred's 
lantern. 

For the attic studio, whose beamed ceiling reaches to the ridge, 
we chose a fixture having three sets of circular lights of diminishing 
size, arranged one above the other, the whole suspended from a 
verde-antique chain matching the half dozen sconces that Lighted the 
side walls. Two gala rooms illuminated by diffused light from 
glass tubes concealed at cornice line were good examples of indirect 
lighting. 

Gas piping kept pace with electric wiring, and included gas log 
connections in several rooms. 

Combination gas and electric fixtures were installed in some 
rooms, and when desirable low candle power bulbs used, preventing 
waste, while switches both up and down stairs controlled many Lights 
within and without, including the ventilated sub-cellar, a real favissa, 
which, by the way, like St. Peter's Cathedral, was of uniform tem- 
perature summer and winter, and properly drained proved a most 
desirable addition. There were a number of base plugs — the base 
trim being high enough to properly centre them — connecting with 
movable electric stand lamps at bedside, study table and easy chair, 
dressing electroliers before mirror doors and bureaus, and especially 
designed fixtures for picture gallery, billiard room, bowling alley, 
den and conservatory. The latter were glass to prevent corrosion. 

The electric light in hall wrap closet operated by opening and 
shutting the door, automatically turning the current on or off as 
required, an air check valve making it economically satisfactory. 

All exterior entrances, including the cellar, were Lighted from a 
switch within the house placed near a window so that any visitor 
could be scrutinized before the door w as opened. 

A secret switch was installed just outside the front door to Light 
the house before entering, and on one memorable occasion this pre- 
caution proved of value. Light — the owner's best and safest defense 
against the midnight marauder — flooded the entire dwelling by 
operating a switch near the master's bed. 

The front door bell was placed on the right of the door, there 
was also electric connection with the knocker, so that when lifted it 



238 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

did double duty — another infringement on the realm of the some- 
times over glamored antique. 

In the dining room floor was the usual foot bell connection; the 
electrical handmaiden domineered in the kitchen. She peeled 
potatoes, prepared other vegetables, beat and boiled eggs, cooked food 
of all kinds and fanned the dishes dry — in fact proved trustworthy 
under the most trying conditions, and often simplified intricate house- 
keeping to the one servant limit. 

Electric Elevators. 

An electric safety elevator for passengers and luggage operated 
from cellar to attic through a brick, fireproof shaft ; all openings 
and doors therefrom metal sheathed, experience having proved that a 
wooden door metal covered will not warp with heat like a solid iron 
door. 

The same dynamo and engine used to operate electric lighting 
and ice making plants ran the vacuum cleaning outfit, whose pipes 
extended from cellar to attic with convenient outlets either in closet 
or hall, and through which into the cellar metal dust-box was forced 
every particle of dust from floors, walls, draperies and pictures. 
Indeed, we used the docile, industrious servant, electricity, that won- 
derful unknown force, in every possible way. Long before the car- 
bonized vegetation of the coal mines is exhausted the pick of the 
miner will rust through disuse, for the penned-in and harnessed might 
of waterways will do the bidding of the great mass of humanity 
and the electric switch and a turn of the wrist w T ill eliminate dust, 
ashes, and much of the laborious work of today. In time eight 
hours will be halved by this mighty giant, and an emancipated super- 
man take the place of the present enslaved, undeveloped burden 
bearer. 

Recesses. 

Two recesses were much in evidence, one a usable ingle, spaced 
for unscorched comfort, the other the billiard alcove big enough to 
squelch profanity, both advantageously placed to vista and enlarge 
what would otherwise have been small adjoining rooms. Recesses 
for sideboards, beds, cribs, bureaus, drawers, chests, closets, bath tubs, 
and shower jogs gave great results, and utilized waste space under 
stairs, eaves, and in chimney angles. Niches in side walls and over 
doorways in entrance hall, corridor, and ball room, as well as 
exteriorly each side of the front door, aided in giving distinction. 
A large sea shell from the Orient hooded a niche in the plastered 
wall of a hall recess holding a telephone, and the guest book was kept 
in a similar alcove. 

Solarium. 

One novelty, a recessed, roofed, and windowed solarium made 
by two projecting ells, and big enough for a real room, with wainscot 



PERGOLA D CLOTHES YARD 239 

and beamed ceiling, was a veritable Sahara in July and August, as 
it faced south, but much used in early spring and late fall, being 
easily screened with glass, netting or awning. Loungingly furnished, 
it made life in the open possible for an even ten months. When 
southwest winds blew too strongly across the porch room or steam 
heat became unbearable, our solarium proved a welcome retreat. 

The indoor effect of the porch room we emphasized by using a 
water-tight wainscot seven feet high, thoroughly painted on both 
front and back, and fastened firmly against the house. Over it a 
plate rack was set four inches from the wall, the open space protected 
by a strip of galvanized wire mesh. Wall area above the wainscot 
was covered with painted and stenciled burlap. A broad brick tiled 
terrace, handsomer, though more expensive, than cement, joined the 
porch room. The combination brick and tile honeycombed parapet 
railed atop with plants gave protection from the fifty foot ravine 
edging the terrace. 

A couple of settles against the veranda rail extended beyond the 
guard rail line, and woven galvanized wire instead of the usual hard 
board seat supported the cushion. This projecting rail protected seat 
gave an uninterrupted outlook on three sides, and overhung the deep 
cliffed ravine, while wide eaves shadowed and shielded it. 

Ten foot spaces between the supporting posts of one pergola 
were filled with a hedge barrier of fine-fibred Japanese privet and the 
wistaria centred pergola broadened at one end into a square tea house 
overlooking the ravine and the formal garden. Garden terraces 
pierced by closely cropped firmed and squared turf steps led to level 
underdrained grass paths — ribbons of velvet green stretching between 
borders of flaming color — while side entrances gave necessary ingress 
and egress to the several outlying features. 

Pergolad Clothes Yard. 

The clothes yard close by, hidden from view, had free circula- 
tion of air. A latticed, vine-embowered screen, with arched gate was 
our first thought, but a grassy slope facing the southeast was finally 
enclosed with a seven foot cement wall covered with climbing vines, 
and pergolad and side-grilled to catch the breeze. The entrance was 
through a gate balanced with clanking chain and cannon ball. In 
another yard we capped the honeycombed wall with red tile. An 
additional pergola screened the servants' portion of the house and 
path leading to the service gate. Between column bases were metal- 
lined, well-drained plant boxes covered with rough bark. 

Awninged Platform. 

Against the house instead of the objectionable covered veranda, 
often too narrow to be really useful, and always darkening the rooms, 
we built an awninged platform on the outer edge of which 
posts supported a plate. On this and projecting three feet beyond 



240 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

rested pergola roof beams, fastened at their inner ends against the 
house. They were permanently boarded and canvas covered four 
feet from the building line, leaving the remaining ten feet to be fitted 
with an adjustable awning. Connecting with this platform was the 
porch room, with ceiling plastered in cement and beamed and decor- 
ated like a living room — an improvement over the usual glary, 
varnished, wooden porch ceiling. 

Decoration. 

The field of decoration in Pinnacle we simply edge. A room 
well proportioned, artistically trimmed, doored and windowed is 
already half decorated. 

An ideal house is one in which the soul can grow. Sunshine, 
air, flowers and an enchanting view of God's green earth, sea and 
mountain, vale and plain, ease burdens and dissipate depression, that 
arch enemy of spiritual and physical growth. 

One of the greatest charms of house decoration is harmony of 
color, and it may be made to cost but a fractional part of the whole. 
Years ago an artist friend studying in Paris gave me a genuine color 
surprise by painting a white picture, of its kind the most effective 
thing I ever saw, a study in shades of white. A white haired lady 
gowned in white satin stood on a rug of white bearskin ; one hand 
rested on a white damask-covered chair, the other on a white enam- 
eled piano, to the right of which was the only bit of color in the 
room — an oriental palm. That picture is in my memory for all 
time — just as a single full blown rose or a few cut flowers vased 
appropriately in hall, dining room, library, and den, supplemented 
with growing plants on stair and centre table, give added charm 
to the most luxuriously furnished room and stamp it on the mind 
for days. 

Papering. 

The problem of papering we approached somewhat cautiously 
annoying experiences having taught its limitations, as well as strong 
points, one of the latter being the power of even a cheap paper if of 
suitable design to counteract the effect of outrageous architectural 
lapses. Care was taken to avoid the assertive spot, the gilt that 
flattens, the large pattern that dwarfs and the color that kills, also to 
remember that papers fade and polychrome effects tire. 

Brilliant flowers, as well as bright colors, under foot and on 
wall, invariably hold the centre of the stage and detract from the 
effect of pictures, drapery, and furniture. Ceilings were light, fleecy, 
and uplifting, rather than dark, overcast, and cloud-lowering, and 
to prevent accident were canvassed or burlapped before being painted 
or frescoed. They were rarely papered. 

The stripe that heightens the room that needs height and the 
one color that gives tone to the most ordinary room, each had an 



DECORATIOS 241 

appropriate place. The rule was to tack several strips from ceiling 
to floor and test for a few days the effect of both sun and artificial 
light. 

In plastering in some cases colors were mixed in the mortar, the 
unevenness of tone so produced being at least novel. 

In one room walls and ceiling were unhygienically rough as gold 
nuggets, and we copper bronzed and gilded until it fairly blazed with 
iridescent rays. 

In a twelve foot ceilinged room a pictured side wall extending 
from the six foot wainscot to the cove made a finish in appearance 
antedating Colonial days. 

Pictures in Wood. 

In another was a rare wainscot of Circassian walnut, impaneled, 
hoards closely matched to form an almost imperceptible joining, and 
kiln-dried to the calcine point. Crowned by a bit of molded capping, 
these pictures in wood rivaled in beauty the work of the frost king 
on the window panes, but its well being meant drying out days 
throughout the year. Heat, sun, and ventilation can alone balk the 
destroyer that always lurks in a closed or partially closed house. 

A touch of realism was given the lofty raftered studio den by 
suspending from the ceiling a trio of stuffed wild geese headed exactly 
north, rivaling the rich patina colored copper arrow inset in the 
loggia floor. 

On the vaulted ceiling of a tower room an artist friend painted 
a flock of circling swallows, half hidden in fleecy clouds, while in 
another treated by a past master in the art was a wealth of rococo 
decoration whose delicate tracery seemed spun by fairy ringers. We 
banished from every room heavy dust gathering draperies that make 
one pant for fresh air and sunshine, substituting in the gala rooms 
non-dust-clinging silk and satin. 

A Real Wall Covering. 

The originator of burlap-covered walls smoothed many an 
awkward "thank you inarm" that once marred the decorator's best 
efforts, and burlap covers many a crack, nail hole and blemish. One 
excellent effect was obtained by a new treatment of this old-time 
wall covering. A gray white burlap was glued to the wall, painted 
an apple green and rubbed down before it was thoroughly dry. The 
color thus removed unequally, as the cross threads on the surface 
received harder rubbing than the back threads, the green of the 
untouched sunken threads showed through the fainter green in spots, 
giving a Japanese silk effect, minus the raveled microbe dust-catching 
ends, forming a wall almost as hard as flint, an absolutely hygienic 
surface that could be redecorated again and again. Restful green 
and restless red were not forgotten. Green, combined with white 
enamel trim seemed almost as refreshing as the shade of a huge tree 



242 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

on a hot summer day, exampled in some giant horse chestnut whose 
branches and leaves green-swathe trunk and limbs from base to 
topmost twig. 

In one boudoir we reveled in framed tapestries, the frame form- 
ing a door head within which were shepherdesses, cupids, green fields, 
and purling brooks. Again, the outside trim member was carried to 
the picture molding which, being in the same design, formed a frame 
in one instance for plaster cast, in another for a painting or burnt 
wood panel over a window head. 

Where windows and doors were near together and in line, one 
long piece of trim over twp or more incidentally made a frieze 
member, and in a number of cooms we built the usual wooden panels 
over doors and under windows, sometimes decorating the former 
with composition or dental work against cap and pediment. 

Home-Made Ornaments. 

Home-made ornaments, such as fire hoods, latches, hinges, door- 
plates, mantel fronts, hooded or plain, flat strips of wood covered 
with sheet copper outlining the hearth, and burnished brass on kitchen 
table top, shelf, and service door footings radiated cheer especially 
in the flickering light of that wonderful, glowing driftwood blaze 
that danced back and forth against polished andirons dented by 
long service and reflected in wall-hung warming pan so prized by 
our forefathers as to be often scheduled in last will and testament. 
Comfort and convenience, the tests every house must stand, were 
the first consideration, for a true home should be a haven of rest. 
The mantel, an essential factor in the appearance of a room, in 
strong measure keys decoration and furnishing, for structural beauty 
is lasting. 

Armored Knights. 

A complete suit of armor stood at each end of the mantel shelf, 
and over balcony and high in entrance hall hung rare old tapestries, 
lending charm to other furnishings. 

Craving originality, as all do, it is a bit of a setback to find 
that the other fellow's idea has preceded that of today by centuries, 
but there is comfort in knowing that at least the "bump on a log" 
stage of the world is passed, even if efforts are honeycombed with 
mistakes. The Twentieth Century average man thinks "it is better to 
be a has-been than a never-was, a never-will-be, or a roi faineant." 

Animal Lawn Mowers. 

It seemed a novelty to some of our visitors that the lawns 
were kept closely cropped by a trio of Angora goats and a 
small flock of sheep, close rivals to the up-to-date motor lawn mower, 
and far more picturesque. An interlocking movable wooden fence 



COLONIAL GARDEN 243 

and saw-buck sheep hurdles purchased by the rod and fitted with 
turnstiles at convenient points prevented damage to shrubhery and 
kept all rovers within bounds. 

At one time extra heavy wool fleeces encouraged us to increase 
our flocks and develop a business side to amateur farming, which 
included squabs, chickens, milk, fruit, asparagus, rose-;, violets, and 
crapes grown under glass. 

The vista of our broadest lawn we lengthened by adding to it 
a half mile of pasture land, using the old English device of a verdure- 
screened fence barely eighteen inches high set at an acute angle at 
the top of a low terrace. It gave life to the view pastoral to see in 
the distance roving cattle and flocks of sheep, none daring to leap 
the frail barrier showing simply as an irregular curving line of low- 
growing shrubbery at the edge of the actual lawn. 

Bird and Squirrel Rendezvous. 

In a sheltered and sunny nook was a bird and squirrel rendez- 
vous. Suet was nailed against the trees, while the ground was occa- 
sionally strewn with nuts and grain, bringing within eyesight, and 
often within touch a wild aviary wdierein no wing was shorn, no 
tiny form ensnared, but where all were as free to come and go as 
the air that lifts them skyward. True, the birds of the Orient were 
missing from our unbarred aviary, but unfettered native bird life 
joyously warbled songs of freedom. 

Colonial Garden. 

''Not wholly in the busy w T orld nor quite beyond it blooms the 
garden that I love." 

We duplicated the old-fashioned alleys of box and the geometric- 
ally designed flower garden of our grandmothers, in some cases 
bordered with English ivy and one blaze of color from June to 
November, aiming to make it what such a garden should ever be, a 
house extension with verdure-canopied seats and rose-screened arbors, 
shaded walks, and shrub-arched gateways, a restful contrast to the 
statued and fountained Italian sunken gardens. Two monastic grass 
paths, closely cut, led from service gate to side door and to the well 
with its old-fashioned sweep, and a flat stone walk such as in Ischia, 
Capri, and Japan satisfy one's craving for the unconventional and 
romantic, connected a pergolad arbor with the house and lych gate, 
over which, framed by virgin's bower, was the gladsome greeting: 
"Through this wide open gate none come too early, none too late." 
Yet, while irregular. Hat stones set in green sod are attractive, they 
are a bit unsafe, and even gravel is disagreeable under foot. If 
appearance must be sacrificed to utility, town asphalt, though heresy 
to breathe it, has more comfort to the square inch. Is it artistic 
solecism that leads one to turn from the safe artificial to struggle, slip 
and fall over the dangerous picturesque? 



244 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

The "boneyard" of a terra cotta factory was found a good place 
in which to buy ornaments for lawn and porch room. A miniature 
temple, a stone god, a bronze dragon from Japan and a sun dial from 
"Olde England" with quaintly phrased and oddly spelled motto had 
appropriate setting 'mid shrubbery, on lawn, and in the plaisance of 
the garden. 

The Maze. 

Remembering an exasperating two hours spent once in trying 
to find my way out of the maze at Hampton Court, I essayed to 
drag my fellows into a like predicament by growing a maze of 
California privet (Arbor Vitas would have required far less pruning 
and screened it all the year). Planted in a sheltered spot, the privet 
maze w T as in leaf up to Christmas, even in the Berkshires. A belve- 
dere elevated six feet allowed the conspirators from their coign of 
vantage to chaff with good natured raillery the lost ones. A stiff 
wire fence centred the entire hedge, and once fairly in the labyrinth 
one mode of egress was to reach the Ibis-centred fountain and study 
the Tnap-of-escape tooled on its edge or depend on the good nature 
of onlookers to direct the path to freedom. 

Horse posts were placed about the grounds in shady spots and 
fitted with swivel-elbow knuckle bar and chain snap fastening, one 
protected by a wooden umbrella canopy bracketed with screened 
light. Near the porch, on a frost-proof foundation, was set a stone 
mount block. 

Moat and Drawbridge. 

In the Norman stables were large conning tower and big arch- 
way, approach being by drawbridge over a moat. We even attempted 
a portcullis gate, iron pointed, barred and bolted, the sort that 
"grazed Marmion's plume," but at the last moment it was recol- 
lected that the proverbially careless boy might loose the chain, so 
critical neighbors were spared this bit of vandalism. Fortunately nature 
had already formed the ditch and a few days' labor with pick and 
shovel and a horse-dirt-scoop, gave us the only moat in the entire 
country-side, drained to form a dry grass-grown hollow instead of a 
mosquito and malaria breeding ditch. The timbered bridge which 
spanned it, built from the staunch oaken girts of our pre-revolu- 
tionary barn deliberately wrecked for this purpose, was realistically 
strengthened by heavy bolts and rusty, corroded, clanking chains, found 
at a second-hand chandlery shop, with which accessories it sometimes 
to some people passed muster as a feudal drawbridge. 

The porte cochere, or rather marquise, was on a sheltered 
side of the house, avoiding an ice-blast cavern, disastrous to heated 
horse and shivering coachman. The glass roof and location prevented 
it from unduly shadowing the entrance hall, as well as adjoining 
rooms. 



GARAGE 245 

An artificial pool fed by springs or slowly flowing water and 
without the stigma of a swamp lowland gives beauty to an estate 
obtained in no other way, especially if placed near enough to the 
dwelling to faithfully mirror its outlines from "turret to foundation 
stone." 

Trout Stream. 

The trout stream that in arid summers aided the springs that 
bottomed Pinnacle's forecourt pool to keep the water brim high, 
threaded a sylvan dell, and none suspected that neither frost nor 
stream placed boulder and pebbled bed or ate into the jettied cliff, 
but that with malice prepense Jim, John and Joe created with dyna- 
mite and pick the major and minor artificial rapids and waterfalls. 

Absent Pennant. 

When the master was at home, "Old Glory" floated in the 
breeze until sunset, and when away a Hagless pole served in place of 
the absent pennant displayed on shipboard. 

Garage. 

The garage was fireproof, being of reinforced cement, with tile 
roof and working pit in the floor. It was large enough to accom- 
modate several cars, with entrance wide and high, ample turning 
space within, and fitted with a turntable.* 
Skating Rink. 

Running the cars under a convenient shed and temporarily floor- 
ing fiver the pit of the garage made on occasion after a thorough 
cleaning, an excellent skating rink. Under the same roof were also 
squash court and chauffeurs' quarters. 

The Lost Vista. 

Follow the carrier pigeon close to two hundred miles as he 
alights on an evergreen tree forty feet high, but in those days barely 
a toot, and you reach the HOME of my "lotus eating days." 

I bought this, my first place, mainly for its magnificent view, 
located as it is on one of the highest hills of Newton, overlooking 
the historic Charles River and the towns of Waltham and Lexing- 
ton, Boston, its fine harbor and the blue hills of Milton. Today the 
view has absolutely disappeared ; shut off completely by my neighbors 
and myself. The lesson — one of many dearly bought experiences 
of a novice — is never to buy nor build on the wrong side of the 
avenue, the side on which neighborly or unneighborly planting or 
building will in time shut out both breeze and view. 

Home shows comfort in porch and veranda, as well as within, 
where there are rooms of generous size and abundance of fireplaces. 

The use (it the turntable solves the often nut difficulty of a garage in confined quarters 
and avoids extra road making for turn-arounds. 



246 HO W TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE. "ROUGH BOUXXIEHED ENTRANCE, 



THE FIRST STEP IN HOUSE BUILDING. 



HOME 



247 




The third floor contains billiard, tower and servants' rooms, while the 
little space under the eaves was sacred to the owner's use. It is 
reached by light weight steps hinged sidewise against the wall — a 
safer way of economizing on a makeshift stair than the weighted, 
ceiling-hung ladder. 

It's many years since the fowl coop landed at the back door and 
a novice tried his hand at housing its contents. The hennery was 
neither square nor plumb, but the pride engendered by that first 
effort has never been eclipsed. This success gave courage to make 
a second attempt in the shape of the little stable shown in the photo- 
graph herewith. These were the earliest symptoms of the building 
mania that afterward possessed me. 

Hole-in-the-Ground Greenhouse. 

In these days a hole-in-the-ground greenhouse represented more 
real enjoyment to the square inch than I ever derived from a hand- 
some U-bar conservatory. 

Seventy-five dollars for some old hot-bed sash, boards, and 
lumber ends, an oil stove and the services of Jimmie for a few days 
gave a greenhouse 10 x 30 and about seven feet to the roof centre. 
It ended against the south side of a six foot high tight board fence 
and was so built that the plants came near the glass, hence abundant 
bloom, while a neighbor's elaborate, high-studded, steel-arched con- 
servatory produced mainly leaves or spindling, blooming plants. 

Expensive construction was avoided by selecting a dry, gravelly 
southern slope and digging a trench thirty-five feet long, three feet 



248 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

deep and four feet wide, which finished in the clear two feet six 
inches in width. A stone drain was covered with ashes, over which 
were laid planks, the sides roughly stoned to prevent the earth from 
caving in. The steep incline of the drain solved a vital question. 
Sills hugged the ground closely and rested on field stone, set in 
cement to prevent rotting. The 3x6 hot-bed sash met in the centre 
against a ridge board, thus forming a low roof, while every other 
sash was hinged at the top for ventilation. The solid bed of earth 
each side, covered a few inches deep with rich soil, being drained by the 
aid of loose stones six inches deep, saved all bench expense and brought 
plants and cuttings near the glass. The ground outside was mulched 
with straw and weeds a few feet from the building to prevent the 
earth from freezing. In the fall I planted closely in sand at least 
10,000 geranium and other cuttings taken from out of doors just 
before Jack Frost appeared. In early spring these were potted off 
in cold frames for later planting out. We grew violets, pansies, 
pinks, geraniums and some bedding plants in profusion, keeping them 
free from insects and mildew by burning tobacco stems once a week, 
and occasionally sprinkling flower of sulphur about the greenhouse. 
A rheumatism breeder ? No ! not to us ; heat was an excellent deter- 
rent. Slipping and potting plants often outrivaled lecture or theatre. 

This hole-in-the-ground greenhouse made an ideal place in which 
to start seedlings for spring planting, as none ever grew spindling 
or sidewise. It also supplied every south window in the house with 
blooming plants. Here were propagated in sand beds set on 
slate and over a kerosene heater rare evergreen cuttings by the 
thousand. The extra length of five feet in the trench was used for 
steps to reach the walk, and as an entrance. This outdoor five-foot 
space had a hinged cover to keep out snow and rain. Properly venti- 
lated, kerosene stoves were used successfully for heating and in 
extremely cold weather the sash was covered with light weight 
straw matting.* If I repeated this experiment the trench would be 
finished to three feet and four feet added to the width of the borders 
to allow ample working elbow room. Many of the plants were set 
in boxes and pots as well as in the ground. The growing odors of 
that bloom-packed, underground flower pit made fragrant and 
brightened and lightened many an overcast day. 

The 10,000 cuttings I raised every year took comparatively 
small space, as they were set only one or two inches apart in the sand. 
They alone paid the cost of this rough and ready greenhouse several 
times over. The site was far enough removed from buildings to 
eliminate fire hazard. 



•^Inexpensive small heating plants are made today that would do the job very thoroughly, 
and a large glass area covering this underground construction scheme could be heated with 
comparatively little expense. 



HAMBURG GRAPES FOR ALL 249 

Hamburg Grapes for All. 

A note of economy was also struck quite successfully in the held 
of Hamburg grape growing, using the same hot-bed sash idea, built 
in chicken coop form, resting on two by tour double sills close to the 
ground, vine roots planted in a regular outside border. This diminu- 
tive cold grapery measured four by six. The vine passed under the 
sash and carried midway between peak and sill the length of the 
little building, while sash was hinged for ventilation, and controlled 
by a short chain at one end to prevent breakage; there were also 
alternate two by six incb openings between the two sills. Vine 
borders in each house were planted with four vines, two on a side, 
richly made of two-thirds decomposed sod and one-third rotted manure, 
mixed with bones and sheep heads in goodly quantity. Underlying 
this eighteen inch deep earth border a drainage bed of small stones 
one foot deep circumvented that great retardant of the grape 
— wet feet. We had Hamburg grapes as fine as the finest grown 
in the more expensive houses, well repaying the time spent in thinning 
out the bunches and the grapes in each bunch. An occasional dust- 
ing with flower of sulphur kept under foot the industrious and 
pernicious mildew, another of the grape's arch enemies. The luscious 
Muscat Hamburgs and enormous bunches of Gros-Colemans did not 
mature well with this somewhat crude manner of grape growing, 
so we kept to the plain Hamburgs which were very satisfactory. 

Just as our little graperies reached full bearing, suburban life 
abruptly ended, to be repeated again, 'cross country, in Red Towers. 
Years later, the twin manias of farming and house-building seized 
us as with a grip of steel. 



:250 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



n 



BUriCiALOW THB ^ECOTiD-lSE'S 

RESTCUFF . 




AM ICEBOUND COAST 



PIONEER BUNGALOWING. 



BUNGALOWS 251 



CHAPTER VII— BUNGALOWS. 

Restcliff — Portable House — Cliff Eyrie — Tiny Cote — Crags 

— Fairview — Trke Top — Heartsease — Sea Boulders. 

THE bungalow of today, taking its name from far-off Bengal, is, 
with the addition of a big living room, porch, and wide over- 
hang, the one-story cottage of one hundred odd years ago. When I 
had the bungalow fever it was an unnamed disease in our section. 

Shack Bungalow. 

Our cheapest bungalows might almost be called roofed verandas, 
so open to air and sunlight are they. Six weeks or so of respite from 
the stilted life that strains; this is what the cheap shack bungalow 
stands for. No cellar, bunked bedrooms, roofed back porch and 
kitchen — a step higher than damp, dank, floored or unfloored tent 
life or even canvas-walled framed shelters. In form and size these 
outing homes are as varied as the demands of the owner or the mood 
of the architect — if there happens to be one. 

There may be only a living room for everything but sleeping and 
cooking; but cooking must be done in an outside galley, if it's no 
more than a lean-to or tent. An upstairs loft with ventilating 
louvres, a wide veranda, the lake or Sound for a bath, and the tree- 
swung, screened-from-insect hammock, complete the essentials for this 
sort of outing. I have even built some bungalows with wide, swing- 
ing barn doors hung on strongly made strap hinges and for greater 
convenience hinged in the middle making at times four doors as 
two the whole width of the living room; the wide space spanned by 
a big G. P. timber, which fairly approximates living in the open.* 

The Obsolete Parlor. 

It was difficult to persuade the thrift-driven Yankee to give up 
his once-a-year-wedding and funeral-parlor, commonize the black 
hair cloth sofa, and allow daily living to come in contact with shell- 
decorated mantel and curio-filled whatnot. Quaintly decorated walls 
greeted one in that sacred enclosure. Framed mosses and autumn 
leaves there were and black silhouettes paralleled with later Daguerres 
of those who had gone before, and samplers worked by daughters of 
the house at the age of wisdom — nine — but the piece tie resistance 
was the wall of mortuary memory which, like the Jew's wailing 
place among the foot stones of Solomon's Temple at Jerusalem, fairly 

■■ : A Folloiv-tht-Sun Bungaloii' was one never tried experiment. As planned, it was a 
four-roomed low building, a staunch turntable, a system of block chocking and post clamping 
giving a tornado-proof grip on the foundation. Water and sewer pipes were made to " hitch 
on" at fixed points with rubber connections. Result — more sun or shade, as desired, and 
changing views. 



252 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



reeked with sorrow. Here were religiously hung, pictured in sub- 
dued gray or black, both weeping willow and widow bending o'er 
the tomb, and framed in glass the waxed flowers last held by 
the hand of death. 

"Let the dead past bury its dead," and let the parlor of that 
past be galvanized into a real living room. 

The bungalow has done as much as any one farm of building 
toward making this sensible and radical change. Even a modest dwell- 
ing can have a room that dwarfs in size the largest in many a so-called 
mansion. In such a house there is no waste space and the care and 
cost of one large room is less than that of three small ones of equal 
area. 

The bungalow or house facing both mountain and water always 
raises the question as to where and how to arrange a rear entrance 
and still keep the two fronts which such a location demands. This 
can be accomplished by ornamental stone or cement work in step, 
post and wall or wooden pergola and the judicious planting of tree, 
shrub, vine and bedding plants, leaving in-front and out-front unin- 
jured and suitably screening the service end. 

Essential Plastered Interior. 

In any bungalow that has graduated from shackdom, the 
necessary freedom from vermin and noise, exclusion of heat or cold 
and an opportunity to decorate demand the small additional expense 
of a plastered interior. 




RESTCLIFF. 



The first two story semi-bungalow we built edged the Sound, and 
was fronted by the storm-beaten cliffs shown in the photographs. 
Restcliff stood six feet above the ground on the south and three 
feet on the north, soil being first well scraped from the cliff, natural 
drainage making it impossible for moisture to accumulate under it. 
Neither shoes nor clothing ever gathered mold. Any rock crevices 



THE FIRST HOUSE ON THE WATER FRONT 253 



l&So- THE FIRST HOUSE Oil THE WATER FRONT- SEPT. lSqO 
ft 




. 



THAT BIT OP MAINE COAST IX CONN. 



254 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

we filled with rubble cement. On the first story twelve-inch floor 
beams were used. To the inner side of each, one inch from bottom 
of beams, shingle laths were nailed, boards cut, fastened crosswise, 
then came two inches of rough cement grouting lightened with ashes, 
and tarred paper across the top of the beams. Diagonal boarding 
was next nailed V-shape as a brace, covered with felt, and finally the 
finished, selected, grained, planed, and sand-papered, filled and waxed 
T & G red birch floor was laid — a floor that made the knees of the 
carpenters ache, but joyed the beholder. For extra warmth and 
dryness the under sides of floor beams could have been papered, then 
ceiled and whitewashed, or covered with cold water paint, but it 
would have been an unnecessary expense, and done at the possible 
risk of inviting dry rot. 

In one corner under the kitchen, we blasted out and cemented 
a furnace pit and vegetable cellar. This, with the big storeroom 
above ground, did away with the need for a full sized cellar, and 
supplies were more easily handled. 

Satisfactory Guest Rooms. 

The second story of Restcliff belonged to our guests, and was 
seldom vacant. There were two suites with bath, and wide bal- 
conies front and rear, reached by a covered staircase connecting the 
lower south balcony with that on the second story. Later a limb 
breaker and weather shelterer crawled upward against the interior 
wall of the living room. An eight foot ceiling and a six foot space 
meant winders and staggering eight and a half inch risers. 

The Sanitary Cellarless House. 

When properly constructed, I believe the healthiest and driest 
house is that which is cellarless, and the healthiest place to sleep in 
our climate is above the first story, hence one great advantage of the 
two-story bungalow. The attractive low effect can be retained by 
using a four to six foot overhang, which also cools the side walls, 
and a long sloping roof pierced with eyebrow windows.* Lift roof 
windows are more picturesque, less aggressive and less expensive 
than the usual Gothic dormer. The kick-up rafter roof, as it is 
realistically called, plus wide overhang and broad veranda or porch 
room are three motifs that stamp comfort as well as grace in the 
exterior lines of a bungalow more than any others. In a twenty-five 
foot rafter the curve or kick-up must be at least six to ten inches ; 
a two-inch rise is scarcely perceptible as I learned by experience. 
The quicker decay of shingle in this form of construction is over- 
balanced by picturesque effect. I built a kick-up rafter roof twenty- 
five years ago and the shingles are still fairly good. If desired, it 
can be restricted to the veranda roof, a slight saving in cost, but 
giving less graceful curves. It is usually inexpensively made by a 

*The "eyebrow" is more expensive than the lift but on some roofs more appropriate. 



DIVERSE DIVES OF DIVERS 



255 




DIVER SB OF 

DIVES DIVERS 



READY 



/ 




STRICTLY PERPEIfDlCULAR 



fiorac. 




conB 




CLOSE QUARTERS 



r 



i 



I <&*. -M^pT' . A JAHUAHY "PIAJHGE 





A FIFTY TOOT DIVE 



ALL OVERBOARD, QUICK AS A RANA! 



256 HOir TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLA 



CE 




* f 



oriE- GOAL 




SELF SUFFICIENCY °/ YOUTH 




DIVW0, PUR AMD CEDAR ARBOR 



f 



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SHADOW PICTURES ~**SAHD BAR ™SFBCTIM6*k. TOPSAIL 



THE. 

FIRST 

SWIMMING* LESSOM 




HO PITFALLS 




TWO AMD A HALF 
YEARS 
THE CEDAR 'VTHE CHILL " "TUTl W - VIATEB'S Fllir 
I A MILK OFF SHORE 

ON THE SHORES OF TIME AND LONG ISLAND SOUND. 



EXPENSIVE ONE STORY BUNGALOW 257 

bit of scantling sawed to pattern at the mill and nailed atop the regu- 
lar rafter. 

Ventilating hood windows were built near each gable apex, one 
equipped with electric fan, used with chemical batteries in the absence 
of power. Ample air space was also left above the rooms. 

Second story hed rooms are hut little additional expense, as no 
larger roof nor foundation is needed, only a trifle higher side walls, 
more partitions, extra Moor beams, Mooring, stairs and a few doors and 
windows — three to five hundred dollars or even less would pay for 
this added convenience of a full second story in a bungalow of mod- 
erate size. 

Death Knell of the Expensive One Story Bungalow. 

Well-constructed two-story bungalows are far more habitable 
even if only week-end propositions. The time has arrived when an 
interior with less of the camping atmosphere is demanded. The 
roomy living room can still be preserved, also the broad stair and 
big fireplace, but there will be added the essential vestibule draught- 
stopper or entrance hall, so that domestic routine will not be inter- 
fered with at unseemly hours; bedrooms will be larger, and the 
bungalow plastered, papered, decorated, heated and plumbed — in 
fact, suitable for use every day in the year if required. The death 
knell of the expensive one-story bungalow in our climate has sounded. 

We built bungalows of varied sorts. One had only a single 
room, in size twenty-five by forty feet, with walls battered outward 
two feet at base, as in windmill construction ; the resultant extreme 
quaintness if not extreme beauty. 

Portable House. 

A portable house? \ es, and for nine years it had but two 
resting places, first on the hill, and then on the cliff bordering the 
Sound. The "tooth of time" aided by one or two young tornadoes 
made it a trifle too cool for comfort. When we bought our portable 
house it was an infant industry, but is today a grown-up, matured 
and feasible summer cabin proposition. 

Cliff Eyrie or the Loo Cabix, as it was more frequently 
called, was built directly on the Sound, and exists exactly as shown, 
both cliffed ami eyried, heavily studded, beamed and diagonally 
boarded, windows made to (it the studs, and weighted with springs 
inset in studding instead of the regulation weights. Hack in the 
woods I found a saw mill, and rough bark slabs mitred at the corners 
gave a realistic log cabin exterior. Hut a log interior encourages 
vermin and dirt. It was necessary to peel off the bark and shellac 
a cedar staircase rail, a hint given when the dust made by the wood 
borer seriously irritated eyes and throat. We once found him 
doing dire damage to an expensive quarter-sawed oak wainscoting, 
the filler having failed to ferret out his hiding places. 



258 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




CLIFF EYRIE. 

Cliff Eyrie was open in the centre to the roof, and galleried 
and bedroomed on two stories; had ventilating windows high under 
the ridge ; bay windows, balconies, and many a touch that stands 
for comfort in country living. 

The "Cave canem" belligerently carved by a jocose visitor on 
the door sill was obliterated and in brass headed tacks the word 
"venitas" welcomed all guests. 




TIXY COTE. 



A STOSE ARCH 



259 




THE CRUELTY OF WIMD AND WAVE 



LIVE AND DEAD WATERS. 



260 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

CUFF E1CR3&- 




THE ALICE- UMDBR HEADWAY 





CARE TREE- DAYS 



B. B.I/. 
STOOD EOR 
AB SOLUTE' 
EEALTY 



LOTUS EATING DAYS FOR LAD AND LADDIE. 



CARE FREE DAYS 



261 



The Continental's Cabin. 

Tiny Cote fitted its name, for it was really the tiniest house 
I ever built. While tramping back in the hills I came across a 
settler's cabin that antedated the Revolutionary War. It was on a 
lonely road, but no architect of the present day could give better 
proportion to roof and wall line than the Connecticut Continental 
who cut the logs and raised the roof-tree of this little cabin. Pacing 
it, the measurements quickly went into my memorandum book, and 
within a week Tiny Cote was well under way on the shore of the 
Sound. Two rooms, a garret, reached by a wall ladder, a stone fire- 
place, and a veranda inventoried its accommodations, but never did 
two hundred and fifty dollars give larger returns. Racked nerves 
that craved the simple life found it in this little cabin. The dinghy's 
painter was tied to one of its cedar foundation posts and there was 
fairly satisfactory fishing from the veranda, on the incoming tide. 




CRAGS. 



A cosy house is Crags, perched on a veritable crag, its front 
half hidden in the shade of a sprawling cedar large enough for robins 
to nest in when the Mayflower entered Plymouth Harbor. Through 
the Dutch door we enter the hospitable living room which adjoins 
the library, arranged to be changed to a bedroom, if desired, as it 
also opens to the veranda. A burnt wood panel screened 
the stair grille and double doors closed the arched opening to the 
Living room. The dining room with fireplace was at one side of 
the living room. Stairs have barely a 6/4 inch rise and lead to a 
windowed stair-landing large enough for a grandfather's clock. Stair 



262 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



THE BARE CRAtK SITE- 




OFF fob cape Ann in ah hous 



INFRONT AND OUTFRONT OF CRAGS. 



HOUSE MOVING 263 

CRAGS Vfc-RAXOA 




HKYDKV DAYS. 



264 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




Fill HI A I'EXXY-A-LINER TO A YACHT. 



SJILIXG THE DEEP BLUE SEJ 



265 




m 

■ . txpsrtoirx — SH£E.r 2 



TIGERS i)F THREE DEGREES 



266 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




SHIPSHAPE 



s»> 




rst LKit or THE sta 




•_. 8 
^1 



V 



OUS C~ATS 

- SHEET 3 - 



THE LAZE OF THE SEA. 



THE YEARLY CRUISE 



267 



XHt "ROCK -FIBBED SHOTOJ- 




EIVTWG PI5R 



■* ;s 




BELLERICA 
h'i: B< lUND, 



268 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE LOG CABIN PROM ALL STANDPOINTS. 



THE BOAT WAYS 



269 



CUFF DVTirE> 



TITTY CGT» 



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FILCHED I'U'i.M THE PIONEER. 



270 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



rail is genuine mahogany and over-mantel decorated with a plaster 
cast framed in the same. An outdoor balcony bedroom, an after- 
thought ventilating lift-window on attic stair to cool the servants' 
rooms and a dry cellar blasted from an almost seamless ledge, barren 
of water courses, made a most complete bungalow. 

The best all round little semi-bungalow that I ever built was 
Fairview, with its eight bedrooms, bath and set tubs. The dining- 
room was arranged to telescope outward when required, by opening 
two wide plate glass doors to a veranda, whose floor was brought to 
the dining room level by a movable platform. In addition were 
living room, fair sized hall, kitchen, and main and servants' porches. 




FAIRVIEW. 

There were two fireplaces, and ample storage room in attic poke- 
holes under the eaves. 

I really think Fairview in plan and appointments outdid them 
all for the cost. The interior is its chief charm, as disobedience of 
orders on the part of the carpenter resulted in the omission of a 
wide overhang and kick-up rafter which were exterior essentials, 
lifting it above the stereotyped cottage. 

Our Nine Hundred Dollar Bungalow. 

In the tree tops stood Tree Top. It's really close to the tops 
of the trees whose upper branches once only edged the veranda rail. 
Today they tower far above it. Five rooms at $180 each make 
up the $900 that this little house cost, with cellar blasted from 
the rock. Plastered, trimmed, and decorated, it only needed a bath- 
room to be complete, and this was afterward added for two hundred 
dollars. 



DREW EOl'R IXCHES 



271 




A MASTHEAD VIEW BELOW AND BEYOND. 



272 HO IV TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




secalmzo aaj*6«JSKS 



THE MAROONED CLOTHES REEL. 



STONE HOUSE VS. HEALTH 



273 







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TREE TOP. 



Stone House Versus Health. 

One of those old six-foot duck guns of our forefathers would 
about carry from the wide veranda of "Crossways" to the front porch 




II EARTSEASE. 

of "Heartsease," embowered in huge chestnuts, and fronting an arm 
of the Sound — one of those arms that look best when the tide is in, 
and worst when it is out, but restfully redeemed when dammed and 
properly water-gated with the essential and sanitary two foot rise 
and fall. No prettier sheet of water ever joyed the beholder than 



274 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

that which fronted our stone bungalow, Heartsease. As a rule, a 
stone house sheltered by trees and with small windows means damp- 
ness. We avoided these conditions as far as possible by having but 
one story of stone. The second, banded with timbered stucco, 
gave a low effect, and it was windowed galore. The interior was 
columned and alcoved, settled and grilled, second floor rooms so 
arranged as to corral southwest breezes and cooled by an attic with 
windows facing north, south, east and west. A well lighted basement 
was secured by placing the house on a side hill. 




SEA BOULDERS, OUR REAL SHORE BUNGALOW. 

Some years later we succumbed to the craze for a modern 
bungalow directly on the shore and sturdy workmen began to build 
the rocky foundations of Sea Boulders. In laying water pipe for one 
of the houses a quantity of golden-hued rock was brought to the 
surface, which, mixed with the brown and green stones that skirted 
the sound, made an ideal color scheme for the chimney and foundation 
walls as well as stalwart quoins. Sea Boulders, frequently called by 
indulgent friends the "bungalow ideal," was built directly over the 
sea, down to sub-rock and iron-anchored in the ledge. The waves that 
at times dash head high against its solid walls and roll under its 
supporting arches can never move nor shatter the massive stone work. 
There is a brass yacht rail on one side of the dock, also on the veranda, 
fitted with galvanized iron mesh to keep children or grown-ups from 
tumbling off, and an arrow sawed from a quarter inch brass plate 
set in the cement floor of the veranda settles definitely the usual con- 



THE MOTOR CAVE 



275 



h < 




DETAILS OF THE BUILDING OF SEA BOULDERS. 



276 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




FREEDOM OF THE WILD. 



THE STOLES CLOSET 277 

troversy among both salt and fresh water sailors as to the points 
of compass. 

Capt. Kidd's Anchor. 

Under the veranda in a water cave is hidden a boat, just as the 
pirates used to hide their big whale boats in some one of the rocky 
clefts that ed^ed the shore, and over the hills is one of the late 
Captain Kidd's shore lairs. One of our neighbors fished up on the 
end of a grappling iron what the village wiseacre swore was Kidd's 
anchor, slipped by him to escape capture. We in turn captured 
the anchor and set it up at one end of the rock esplanade. 

Entering: the bungalow through a side-settled outer porch one 
inventories at a glance its most striking features. The big oak iron- 
strapped and grilled door, on whose stained sea-green glass wicket 
window is inscribed the name "Sea Boulders," opens to a short and 
narrow red-tiled hall, a stop draught as well as screen for the big 
living room, which is twenty by forty-seven feet, its size increased 
by an outdoor porch dining room, connecting with it by four large 
doors aggregating fifteen feet in width, hinged in two sections so that 
on occasion they can be swung entirely open, forming one large room,. 
but such an arrangement is a rare finger pincher unless carefully 
handled. The centre of this room is thus made thirty-five feet in 
width against its full length of forty-seven feet. Ventilation is aided 
by electric fans set against outlets which, protected by baffle boards, 
are cut in each gable end close to the peak. 

The Stolen Closet. 

The dilemma of how T to closet a bedroom without decreasing its 
area or injuring the symmetry of an adjoining room was solved by a 
full sized portiered doorway leading from a bedroom into a false 
front six foot high cabinet firmly fastened against the separating wall 
of the larger room. The interior of the closet thus filched from it 
is lathed and plastered. 

The inglenook end of the living room is fifteen by twenty feet, 
and has red quarry tile Moor and a wide stone fireplace, at each side 
of which are big settles, placed under window's of copper-set stained 
glass, which stands wear much better in a swinging casement than 
if set in lead. The trammels hanging from the crane in the large 
fireplace have seen service for one hundred and fifty years, while 
the grandfather's clock in the near by inglenook has ticked in and 
out the lives of four generations. In the fireplace arch are three 
pendant iron rings for handling heavy logs. Ship-kneed brackets 
support the carrying beam fronting the inglenook and there are wide 
settles in the leaded bay window on the east. 

In the centre of the living room is a flower-bordered electric 

fountain. 



278 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

SEA BOUL DERS south west front 




IHGLEtiG 3K SHrp kheed brackets 

THE BUNGALOW IDEAL. 



SEA BOULDERS 



279 



THE TlFTEEn FOOT DOORWAY 



nil 

I llll 

i mi 




CLIFF EYPIE- 



THE MOTOK-I'.mAT CAVE UNDER THK VERANDA. 



280 HOW TO MAKE A GOVS TRY PLACE 




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CARB FREE 



"FROZBM WAVES 



SITTING ON THE RIBS OF WRECK. 



BACK PLASTERING 281 

On this floor arc three bedrooms each with set basin, beside two 
toilets and hath, Laundry, servants' room and a kitchen, while below 
stairs are coal and furnace room, cold storage closet, hath houses, 
another toilet, and boat lockers. From the laundry private steps 
lead to a separate bathing beach for the servants. The three upstairs 
bedrooms all have special features. Copper-set stained ^lass case- 
ments made of bulls' eyes in an antique design swing into the large 
corridor, and in one room there is a stained glass window in the 
centre of the outside stone chimney, care being taken so to construct 
the two flues that the draughts will not be affected. At either side 
of the chimney is an outside balcony, and each bedroom has its own 
set basin with hot and cold water. 

Trunk room on the north includes the generally unused space 
over the veranda — the tie floor beams of which are of nine inch 
timber — anil is lighted both by hall and exterior windows set with 
translucent leaded lights. It is also conveniently reached by a 
securely locked trap door in the veranda ceiling. 

Over the well, high under the roof, are heavy cambered beams. 

Electric lighting is unique in several ways. On the under side 
of the ridge is fastened a heavy rusty iron anchor chain from which 
we suspended an electrolier built from swords and bayonets. Side 
brackets in inglenook are electrically-tipped stag horns, while at the 
four corners of the well opening on second story are tapering square 
edged posts six feet high, capped with plaster heads crowned with 
electric lights. At the four lower corners, close to the living room 
ceiling, project gargoyles, copies of those at Notre Dame, from whose 
mouths hang antique Paul Revere lanterns, modernized by electricity. 
A startling effect is produced by the shafts of light piercing their 
pin holes. 

Under the glass hood over the kitchen range is an extra flue, 
within which an electric fan at the pressure of a button draws up 
chimney all odors. To economize floor space the boiler is stoutly 
hung from the ceiling above the range. 

Back Plastering. 

Construction of Sea Boulders is most thorough, and it is an all- 
the-year house. Stone work is laid in cement, and all wooden exterior 
walls covered with galvanized iron lath, with three coat work of 
stucco, the last coat pebble-dashed. The entire house is back plastered 
on wire lath. All floors are deadened with air spaces, using a mix- 
ture of cement, coal ashes, ami sawdust — lighter and better than 
plain cement for this purpose — and two thicknesses of tarred paper. 
I he upper of the two floors on both stories is of hard wood, house 
trimmed throughout with selected red birch, and lower floor trim 
stained a rich, dark mahogany, except bedrooms and kitchen, which 



.282 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

are enameled in cream white and coated with spar varnish, hard 
wood with the close grain of birch making a smoother finish for 
. enameling than softer woods. 

All rooms are plastered in wood pulp except halls, bathrooms, 
laundry, kitchen, servants' rooms, and closets, and have no base- 
boards to harbor insects, but are wire lathed and cemented on floor 
and side walls, forming a sanitary base. Bedrooms and living 
rooms are papered. 

Salt Water Bathroom. 

One bathroom has separate piping for salt water and pump with 
pipe connection to deep water. Strainer is of galvanized iron instead 
of copper, which is injured by salt water. There is also a bathroom 
on the second floor. 

A standpipe for fire hose and another for vacuum cleaning have 
two connections on each floor, both protected in glass fronted alcoves. 

Plumbing is open, and hardware and electric fixtures in bath- 
room are nickel plated. 

Outdoor Shower. 

The outside hot and cold water showers are set over a cement 
base, and shut-offs connect with bath houses. 

A Lobster Tank. 

A water-tight fish tank six feet deep with water-gate insures a 
supply of fresh shell and scale fish at all times. It is immersed two 
feet at high tide, and its inmates imprisoned by a galvanized iron 
mesh screen with hinged door. 

The Yacht Studio. 

Near Sea Boulders a friend warped to the edge of the lawn a 
condemned yacht. 

Old Canal Boat Shack. 

His next door neighbor beached an old canal boat, bought for 
a song, and these boats with a bit of fitting up made ideal dens on 
the water's edge. Many a magnificent mahogany brass-trimmed 
yacht can be picked up for a tithe of its cost, making a charming 
studio or even a summer home, a house boat on land, but a healthy 
location away from polluted waters is an essential. 

The bottoms of these two boats received at least six coats of 
tar and rough boulders were piled against their sides to lower the 
height while vines and shrubs planted between stones embowered 
the windows. 

They reminded me of ten year old days, when a yawTrigged, 
flat bottom boat, with real cabin and cooking galley, and mast, sail, 
and rudder, was built in the centre of the lawn by a happy-go-lucky 
little lad. 



A YACHT STIDIO 



283 




sw I i;l AND CALM. 



284 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

This dry land boat gave glorious fun for several summers to 
all surrounding kiddom in the glamored hours of childhood, when 
our kites, sleds, and ponies are the "bestest" kites, sleds, and ponies, 
and grown-ups to this day talk of the children's white-winged lawn 
yacht. 



STILL AND QUICK LIFE 



285 




STIRRING THE WATERS. 



286 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE HARBOR WATCH-DOG. 



HOW TO BUILD 287 



CHAPTER VIII. 

How to Build and Kelp Within the Limit Decided Upon 

A Livable House For From $2,500 to $12,000. 

A Mansion up to $100,000. 

"When we mean to build 

We first survey the plot, then draw the model; 
And when we see the figure of the house 

Then must we rate the cost of the erection, 
Which, if we find outweighs ability, 

What do we then but draw anew the model 
In fewer offices, or at least desist 
To build at all." 

— Henry the Fourth, Part II, Act 1 ; Scene 3. 

Building Hints to the Amateur. 

Living is serious business and the advice "look before you leap," 
particularly applicable to the would-be builder, for if an amateur 
gets into the toils of dishonest people and cannot furnish the where- 
withal to dig out of his difficulties, he is liable to heartache, cankering 
worry, and even bankruptcy. But the landing can always be safely 
made if certain copper fastened rules are observed. 

I've know T n scores of men who have sunk all their money, and 
some few have lost reason and even life by not counting the expense 
of the new house. Using these instances as warning beacons and 
reef-buoys, first carefully figure the cost, plan for payments through 
cash on hand, if possible; if not, raise money on long term or bank 
mortgages, at low rates of interest, and then make the plunge but 
only when the "if" and the "but" have been carefully thought out, 
ever remembering that the lure of country living is an insidious 
siren requiring constant watching. 

The temptation to outdo one's neighbors in acquiring additional 
acres, embellishing grounds, purchasing live stock, utensils, and 
vehicles, and giving unbridled rein to the fascinating pursuits under- 
lying the making of a country place ever waits to undermine and 
destroy. Financial stakes should be set at the start, and only 
loosened, relocated, and redriven when amply assured invested income 
keeps step with prodigal outlay. Many a man has sown the tares of 
imprudent and lavish expenditure with his choicest flowers, and 
reaped disaster, if not premature death, his life work blasted by that 
phase of misguided ambition immortalized in the line "By that sin 
fell the angels." Take nothing for granted, especially in purchasing 
land ; a good lawyer or a title guarantee policy are essentials. 



288 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Throttling the Four Building Dragons. 

Four dragons that often bar the way of the amateur are 
( 1 ) ignorance, (2) impecuniosity, (3) duplicity, and (4) avarice; 
but forewarned is forearmed, and they are easily recognized and 
vanquished, however disguised by fair words, a bold front and specious 
promises. Eliminate these, and the path that leads from the lifting of 
the first shovel of earth to pulling the latch-string is one of delight. 
A few disappointments are to be expected, but they are slight com- 
pared with the pleasure of creating a sensible and livable dwelling. 

How to Build- 

A house to cost from $2,500 to $12,000 should be let under the 
usual contract form, unless one prefers to follow the special contract 
system advised for the building of a mansion or it can be let on a 
strictly percentage basis. Close competition will pound the price to 
a ten or fifteen per cent, profit to the contractor, which is little 
enough for assuming the monetary responsibility in addition to an 
employers' accident risk, but the owner must make sure that he is 
not made personally liable by letter or act for costly delays and 
extra expenses entailed in the process of building. Indeed, his 
peace of mind usually hinges upon the carrying out to the letter of 
the four following rules: 

1. Never give out a building contract without a bond 
for its completion, and within a specified time, bona fide 
strikes, unavoidable cyclones, floods, fire and earthquakes 
excepted. 

2. It is an excellent incentive to the contractors for 
the owner to promise a bonus on completion of their several 
contracts within or ahead of schedule time if satisfied with 
the result, or better still, a specified bonus as an offset to 
a time-forfeiture-of-money clause which to be legal must 
take the form of damage loss. The contract should stipulate 
that a certain number of men are to be kept at work, and 
at each Saturday payment the owner should hold back ten 
or fifteen per cent, of both labor and material bills until the 
work is completed. 

3. Never change the accepted plans and specifications 
except in writing, having such changes immediately ratified 
in writing hy the contractor. Minor changes often entail 
major. It will be mutually far more satisfactory, and 
save quibbling, if not a quarrel, later to settle the amount 
of the extra cost over signature if that is possible at the time 
changes are decided upon. 

4. Payments for work done and material purchased 
must be handled with business acumen ; carelessness in this 
respect may result in the owner being obliged to pay 
the same bill for labor and material tic ice. 



BUILDING DILEMMAS 289 

The mechanics' and supplj material lien and building 

laws, also the tax rate, in the State in which one is building 
are important documents to study before commencing opera- 
tions. 

Legal rights must be clearly defined between owner, architect, 
and contractor, the contract should also give the owner the right to 
change men or materials if either prove different from the agree- 
ment, and to make alterations in design or construction, always pro- 
vided it is done and accepted in writing and the cost approximately 
adjusted. A builder must not be given the slightest opportunity to 
say a thing is according to plan when it is self-evident that a mistake 
has been made and plans must be accurately drawn to meet these 
aggravating contingencies. 

Irresponsible Contractors. 

Within the ranks of artisans are to be found bidders (I am glad 
to say they are few) who will submit phenomenally low figures — 
much below the sum for which the work can be thoroughly done. 
If the contract is given to any of these, there are ten chances to one 
that one or all of the four dragons, ignorance, impecuniosity, dupli- 
city and avarice will give you the fight of your life before you have 
use for the latch key. After these contractors have drawn the last 
cent on an architect's certificate, to speak in building parlance, their 
modus operandi is to "lie down on the job," throw up their hands, 
and cry poverty. The amateur has then reached a stage in his opera- 
tions that ordinary common sense, if given half a chance, would 
have warned him against in the beginning. I hear the echo of the 
cry. At this point the complicated situation beggars description. 
The weak-kneed and practically dishonest contractor frequently relies 
on being hired by the day to finish the job, cannily figuring that as 
he knows more about it than a new man, he stands a better chance 
to continue the work. As a rule, it is far more satisfactory to get 
rid of such poor timber. "Small choice in rotten apples." It is 
surprising how such a contractor to save a few dollars will injure 
a fine house thousands by leaving loopholes for moisture at window, 
door, and eave opening, skimping in paper ami felt linings, allowing 
insecure nailing and scant bracing, covering up shaky and soggy 
lumber, and using green instead of kiln-dried wood. The owner 
often makes a close second by employing a makeshift architect or 
none at all and cutting corners by using cheap labor and material, 
thus wasting both time and lumber. 

Building Dilemmas. 

And now let us look at the other horn of the dilemma. There 
are responsible and reputable builders who will sign a contract at a 
higher price and will certainly finish the house, but when? At the 
hour of signing, the contractor, we will say, has but little work 
ahead, and his promises as to time are emphatic and specific. In 



290 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

fancy, through his wonderful mirage language, even before the cellar 
is dug you are seated on the lawn gazing at a completed dwelling 
four months to an hour from the day of signing the contract. Poor 
unsophisticated humanity! If your house is at all pretentious you'll 
be fortunate if it is not an even six months before you enter your 
home, if the builder should be rushed with work, and especially if 
cautions numbers two and three have been omitted in the contract, 
and there is no time forfeiture working against him. It's human 
nature to take every job in sight if there is neither bonus nor time 
limit staring the contractor in the face, or if he has given only a 
verbal promise, he will handle his men like a pendulum, if he has 
several jobs, swinging them from one to the other, and will pos- 
sibly become badly mixed in his "time data" for finishing your house. 
A threatened spell of rainy weather will dwindle your beehive full 
of workers on a Saturday pay-day to a couple of lonely carpenters 
on Monday morning, their occasional hammer taps a travesty on real 
work, compared with Saturday's progressive din. You take an 
expensive half-day from business to ascertain the cause of this sudden 
cessation of activity, and finally locate your gang laying sills and 
setting up the studding of a new house two or three miles away. 
Your Saturday payment has been used to start another job. 

Excuses of Contractors. 

Then comes the list of excuses, which I know by heart ; some 
are certainly plausible and at first sight appear unanswerable : "The 
Georgia pine beams are short ten sticks, and it is unsafe to build 
higher until they are in place." "The sash came the wrong size." 
"The soft mud brick delivered is not hard enough for the chim- 
neys." "Sand that should have been on the job for the masons was 
on a barge that ran on the flats and cannot be floated until the next 
perigee tide, which will be weeks off. In the meantime, while wait- 
ing for sand, the masons began a rush cellar job to last but three 
or four days," which is a disguised way of saying two weeks, and 
so on through an extended list. All good excuses, but excuses don't 
build your house, and you wish to be in it in August, not December. 
The non-arrival of two loads of sand at a critical time when I was 
away for three days made four months' difference in date of occu- 
pancy ; everything froze solid, and it seemed unwise to start timber- 
ing until the stone work was in place. Stone or brick laid in frosty 
weather may be unsatisfactory, although a neighbor built a brick 
chimney one hundred feet high, years ago, with the thermometer 
close to zero, and it still stands. 

Forfeit vs. Bonus. 

But are these discouraging and annoying conditions surmount- 
able? Certainly, if you have inserted clauses one, two, and three in 
your contract. If the honest contractor was confronted by a fat for- 
feit, or saw within his grasp, when the house was finished, a bonus, 



BUILDING OF A MANSION 291 

conditions would be radically different, and by August first you'd be 
in a wringing perspiration running a lawn mower and swinging in 
hammocks on porch room and balcony to your heart's content. Even 
if the sand lighter was on the mud flats the contents of another 
would be piled on your ground. Those Georgia pine beams and 
hard brick would be in place, and the other fellow waiting. Build- 
ing, instead of being a continual rasping menace, and an Iliad of woes, 
wondering what exasperating set-back would come next, would be a 
joy. From properly built and legitimately greased ways is easily 
launched the most ponderous super-dreadnought. 

But assuming that cautions two and three were omitted from 
the contract, you may find the contractor considerably in your debt 
before the chaotic state above described has become chronic. At this 
stage you are practically powerless, and are in his hands, so far as 
time of completion is concerned. You cannot discharge the few ordi- 
nary workmen he has left and substitute a larger and more capable 
force; this would be considered uncalled-for interference and break 
the contract, and his over-draft in a measure places you in his power. 
The dilemma is most exasperating, yet in the midst of it all the 
builder airs his trials with workmen and material supply men so 
eloquently that, ten chances to one, in a weak moment you in a 
measure commiserate him in his jeremiads and possibly commit the 
farther folly of allowing him to still draw 7 ahead of his just dues. 
It is true, your house is weeks, perhaps months, behind schedule time 
for finishing, but you can only worry, fume, and pay the bills, deriv- 
ing meagre satisfaction by swearing that if ever this house is finished 
you will never build another, and perchance wearing out the patience 
of friends and neighbors by the recital of your woes, whereas a con- 
tract drawn along the lines stated would have placed you among the 
optimists in building. 

The Building of a Mansion. 

If the building of the $2,500 to $12,000 house appears intri- 
cate, that of the $50,000 or $100,000 mansion seems more so, though 
it is not in reality. Thorough consideration of and preparation as to 
the following four distinct points are the essentials for complete 
success : 

1. Location. 

2. Plan. 

3. Material. 

4. Method of building. 

To build satisfactorily a house of this size, no matter how much 
care has been taken in preparation of the plans, is practically impos- 
sible without minor, and sometimes radical and more or less expensive 
changes, but if built along the lines indicated these changes will cost 
less than if the one contract system had been adopted. Changes 
under a one contract system, unless very carefully guarded, lead to 



292 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

complications and extra expense that will sometimes double the cost 
and the builder is not always entirely to blame, for, unless carefully 
watched, the work gets beyond the least expensive change point. In 
the realm of extras lie aggravating experiences. 
As to labor: 

1. Dirt or stone costs so much per cubic yard to 
excavate. 

2. Stone foundation costs so much per cubic foot in a 
wall. 

3. Stone, brick and terra cotta blocks cost so much 
per cubic foot in place. 

4. Plastering on wooden or wire lathing costs so much 
per square yard on the walls. 

5. Tile, shingle, slate, copper and tin cost so much 
per square in place, and flashing can be combined with the 
plumbing contracts. 

6. Plumbing and heating can be let in one contract, 
and totaled to a dollar. 

7. Electric lighting, ditto. 

It's simply a question of mathematics. The foregoing seven 
items can be figured accurately and a number of responsible bidders 
found who will make a fair living profit and yet give you an excel- 
lent piece of work. Add to the above items the following: 

Carpenter's labor contract to plastering line, including 
careful cutting for the plumber and steam fitter. 

Carpenter's labor contract from plastering to complete 
finishing of exterior and interior. 

Painter's contract, including floor treatment. 

Architect's fee. 

Manager's salary, preferably for a year, privilege 
reserved by both owner and manager of canceling the con- 
tract any Saturday night — an essential legal form, as a con- 
tract with an irresponsible employee is always one-sided and 
in substance really only holds the employer. 

Material of every kind should be figured with great 
accuracy. Have your architect, manager and a practical 
builder figure the list separately ; in this way you can ferret 
out errors that with the greatest care are bound to occur. 
Material men will compete to supply you and much can be 
bought in carload lots, saving the price of an extra haul. 

Allow liberally for freight, express, cartage and even 
interest charges. 

Figure water supply, sewage, grading, planting, and 
general landscaping. 

Insurance. 

Insurance — fire, glass, and employers' liability — is also 
especially important. 



BUILDING INSPECTION 293 

To save all chance of a disappointing result, add from 
ten to fifteen per cent, for possible changes, and you will 
know quite definitely the maximum cost of your house under 
any ordinary conditions that may arise. 

Building Inspection. 

An absolute essential if the above system is adopted is to hire an 
honest, competent man, not necessarily physically able to work, to 
whom you will pay, say three to five dollars a day to be on the job 
every hour of each working day, but for reasons stated hired by the 
week. It will be his business to see that your orders are carried 
out, that every scrap of material is on the ground ahead of time, to 
check bills and keep a list of men at work in each department, and 
to aid in weeding out the sluggards, who have a bad effect on all 
other workers. 

I beg of you, do not get enmeshed in the friendship net. Avoid 
the well-meaning man who says he knows all about building, and 
will enjoy looking after the construction of your house without a 
cent of remuneration. He is too close a friend either to be offered 
pay or to be criticized for his judgment and methods. I went through 
that mill once at quite a cost, and know some half dozen other 
unfortunates. In each case, it proved a lamentable failure on both 
sides. 

Hire some one to dog the job whom you can discharge Satur- 
day night if unsatisfactory, and talk to like a Dutch uncle all the 
week, if the case requires. You are to live in the house and you 
pay the bills. 

The man for you should be a practical builder who can tell "a 
hawk from a handsaw," has had wide experience, is quick to note 
the value of important changes, and advise the least expensive and 
most thorough way of making them, and can see that no material 
is wasted nor carted away. He need not lift a hammer, in fact may 
be incapacitated except for head work, but "drest in a little brief 
authority," can shoulder a weight of responsibility that could not 
be carried by a layman, or, if physically fit and amenable to reason, 
work under direct supervision of architect or builder a portion of 
the time and thus pay at least half his way. 

In a job of this character, the carrying away of any pieces of 
wood, however small, except chips and shavings, until the house is 
completed is objectionable. Crippling, forming frames for arches, 
coving ceilings, deadening of floors and stopping fire draft at plate 
line and floor beam ends require the very pieces that the contractors 
or workmen usually cart away, therefore, before beginning the 
job, have it thoroughly understood that no material is to be removed 
except that laid aside by the inspector for that purpose. It may not 
be so much the worth of the material as the lack of needed pieces 
at an important time, and in a big job the "carting away habit" 



294 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

always evaporates considerable desirable material, and often causes 
quarrels among the men. 

I invariably selected on the grounds, or on each floor of a build- 
ing, certain places for waste lumber ; 2 x 4's in one pile, board 
ends and timbers in another, but built up in solid masses, to avoid 
extra fire risk. From these may be selected by the handy boy material 
required by the artisan. Such a boy, interested in the work, and at 
everyone's beck and call for nails, water, material or tools, saves his 
wages many times. It's a good rule, as far as possible, to insist on 
workmen remaining on roof, scaffold or floor on which they are 
working until noon and again until quitting time, having their 
requirements brought by the handy man or boy. The dawdling habit 
is contagious and will greatly increase the cost of building. 

Eye Service. 

A contractor as honest as the sun cannot eliminate eye service, 
in a day job, and giving out to the men that it is a contract job deceives 
no one, therefore, unless the owner is willing to have the work cost 
more than it ought, under no circumstances should he build an elab- 
orate house by the day. Building on a percentage basis is often but a 
partial solution. The special contract system, with an inspector, 
gives the owner many advantages without the waste, delay and extra 
expense that too often go with a day's work job. 

Short and Long Mathematics. 

Short mathematics will show in a line the cost of a house which 
with wide latitude may be figured from ten to twenty cents per 
cubic foot contents or from three dollars to eight dollars per square 
foot area including labor, which will cost from twice to three times 
as much as the material. A rule of thumb but elastic as 
the requirements of a vascillating owner. Used with judgment, 
it will hit approximately near the nail, but accuracy requires longer 
and closer mathematics. 

Accurate Measurements. 

The amateur builder working under the above plan will buy 
his own material, for he can thus make considerable saving. Sash 
and window frames to avoid mistakes should be ordered from the 
same mill, though at best errors are bound to occur, and must be 
rectified by the wood-working contractor, who should himself take 
the dimensions. Accurate measurements of everything connected 
with the building are essential. 

Contracts for plumbing, heating and electric wiring (preferably 
iron pipe or cable system) can all be let by fair competition at a satis- 
factory price, and minus the extra charge made by the general con- 
tractor for this service. 



SLEEPING PORCH, CONSERVATORY, AVIARY 295 

Safeguarding Against Building Errors. 

A substitute for this plan, if one does not wish to assume the 
care and responsibility of handling each individual contractor, is to 
get all the contracts lined up, then let the entire job to a capable 
builder and pay him a fixed sum to turn your house over to you 
within a specified time. Ostensibly, the builder is the man to whom 
the sub-contractors look for their pay, and he can handle them better 
than you can, for you may never build another house, while the 
builder will require services of this kind as long as he is in business. 
In reality, you stand back of him. A curious realm, this of build- 
ing, and many of its members are no different from those who 
manipulate the stock market or corner cotton, wheat and oats. 
Delay for Inspection. 

Assuming that the former plan has been adopted and the exterior 
is about completed, let us halt to consider carefully the exact condi- 
tions before plastering. In this analysis stop all important work for 
a week at least, and bring all the talent and expert advice you can 
to bear upon any required changes, for these must be made if you 
are to have a satisfactory house, and can be tried out by the strips 
of wood hereinafter described. Should not this door opening be 
moved a trifle? Are the windows in the morning room too high 
or in the bathroom too low? Is the kitchen light enough? Should 
this or that partition come down? Would not double doors between 
these two bedrooms be a great advantage in case of illness, giving 
extra sunlight, companionship, care and air? That door is too close 
to the fireplace, and we forgot a toy closet in the playroom; a south- 
west window in the nursery will make it cooler for the children ; 
one window in this room is unsafely low; by moving that stair open- 
ing forward or back a foot we can build a platform, thus avoiding 
a window as well as a winder, hence an easier and safer climb, and 
the window arrangement on the north as seen from the outside is 
abominable. 
Sleeping Porch, Conservatory, and Aviary. 

Leading from that south room we can construct a sleeping 
porch, and sometime build on the balance of the veranda roof space 
that joy of the housewife, a second story conservatory and aviary big 
enough to swing a hammock 'mid plants, singing birds, and winter 
sunshine. This closet is large enough for an outside window ; had 
we not better cove that ceiling? By wainscoting the hall we can 
save a finishing coat of plaster and obtain a better effect — in fact, 
at this stage of the building changes and improvements frequently 
save, as well as cost, and crotchets of comfort can often be indulged 
at slight expense. 

Essential changes that make a house just right should always be 
made, as one generally builds but one home. "Almost right" stavs 
with us to the end, clouding an otherwise satisfactory conception. 



296 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Show me a man who tells you his house was built exactly as the 
original plan called for, and I will show you a man dissatisfied for 
life. 

Study your house from garret to cellar, then re-study it, like 
your college valedictory, again and again, and see how startled you 
are at finding some glaring error that has escaped architect, builder, 
and all criticizing friends. One of my first houses was passed upon 
by the purchaser as absolutely satisfactory, when one day he dis- 
covered that to reach the front door the maid must trail across the 
dining room. I at once built a one story palm corridor which 
obviated the difficulty and vastly improved the house, but if I had 
stopped work long enough when the rooms were studded to consider 
possible improvements, this glaring defect would have been discovered 
and remedied before the house was plastered. When you are con- 
fident that everything is right, and after straightening and leveling 
all studding and floor beams, plaster, and when this is done stop 
work a week for finals. Forethought should have dictated months 
ago that which will have much to do with the beauty of your house, 
i. e., the kind of wood to be used for trim, and its treatment, for 
this will control wall and ceiling decoration, as well as furnishings — 
if unfortunate delays have occurred give your closest thought to trim 
selection, "better late than never" holds especially good in house 
building. Plaster effects molded in ceiling should be decided upon 
in detail, as they are more economically placed when the house is being 
plastered. Final touches can be settled after the house is trimmed. 

In trim and stairs, material and workmanship you will find a 
wide range both in thoroughness of mill work and expense. I once 
cut the cost of trim for a large house in half — and both quality of 
work and execution were excellent — by ordering during a quiet season 
doors, windows, trim and stairs, months ahead of requirements from 
a first-class country mill near a hard wood supply, favored by cheap 
labor conditions, and in need of a back log to keep running full time. 
A rush order to a mill often means a high price, possibly poorer work, 
and half kiln dried material. 

You have now reached your final labor contract, the setting up 
of the standing trim, hanging doors and windows, placing beamed 
ceilings, floors and stairs, which latter, as well as wainscoting and 
pantry dressers, can preferably be shipped ready to set. It will sur- 
prise you to find how reasonably this contract can be let if you go 
about it in the right way. Good mechanics ambitious to become gen- 
eral contractors will give both excellent service and low prices, but 
ability to handle men and lay out work is essential. 

Meantime, with the help of the landscape gardener, you have 
planned the planting and general landscaping, for this should keep 
pace with the building of the house. 



CORNERING ELUSIVE TIME 297 

Cornering Elusive Time. 

Don't lose an entire year. None of us have a surplus of that 
for which the whole world is gasping — time, so plant and protect. 
Over this work your inspector has had general oversight; he has also 
kept nails and other hardware under lock and key, protected door 
and window sills, scribbled across the plate glass to prevent breakage 
and attended to locking the house at night. He has carefully looked 
after the burning of all inflammable debris, especially shavings {this 
should be done every day when there is not too much wind), and 
had an oversight over all other fires, primarily those of the plumber 
and mason, anil if salamanders are used, seen that they are in good 
repair and with ample sand bed protection ; also carried the burden 
of the hundred and one other things that if promptly attended to 
help prodigiously in the building of a house. 

Saturday Night Accounting. 

I grant you this method of building has its intricacies, and means 
responsibility, but one great redeeming feature that may be 
vital to your peace of mind is to knozv just where you stand every 
Saturday night. By special arrangement with the contractors, 
and insertion of such a clause in the contract, you can insist on hav- 
ing fifty men at work Monday morning, and cut the number to two 
the next week. A friend building a fine home found it financially 
inconvenient to finish it as planned. Rather than cheapen the house, 
he boarded it in and completed it the following year, his contract 
allowing him this latitude. If details prove too onerous or you 
have not time for frequent inspection, plenty of contractors will stand 
in line at any stage of the construction to take the job off your hands 
and push it to completion. The contract can contain a clause to buy 
off your small contractors on payment of a stated sum on account 
of change in plans. A year in the business world is a long period 
and often brings reverses and financial sheet anchors may prove con- 
venient to the most affluent. 

The usual contract method of building a $50,000 to $100,000 
house is open to the grave objection that few contractors will figure 
on a job of this size except with a liberal margin, counting the 
"know how," the risk, and the fact that in seven cases out of ten 
changes may run the total cost from $75,000 to $150,000, and perhaps 
entail legal complications. Then again, the careful contractor must 
add to his figures a percentage to cover the money risk in selling you 
labor and materials, a risk on which you of course do not figure. 

All contracts should carry an employers' accident policy, and 
the owner should see that the premium is paid, even if he has to 
stand the expense. 

The question of employing a night watchman must he decided 
by each owner for himself, but it is a wise precaution in a job of 
any magnitude. 



298 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 




THE TREES 
GREW 

THBOUSH THE 

VERAliDA 



OUR THREE TYPE VERANDAS. 



TECHNIQUE OF BUILDING 299 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Dry Technique of Building for the Amateur. 

TO build or not to build ? Those who answer in the affirmative 
and have time, taste and coin of the realm sufficient, if they 
are true philosophers and can brook delays and disappointments, 
revel in the joy of creating for its own sake, a joy unknown to the 
portion of humanity that, like the swinging tree moss, catches first this 
branch, then that in its embrace ; parasitical in habit, blowing hot 
or cold ; often unanchored and drifting. The home can be made a 
permanent anchorage to the most restless mortal, and he who thus 
creates heels closely that time-honored human who made two blades 
of grass to grow where one grew before and leaves the world better 
for his brief advent. 

Intensely interesting is the country house craze breaking out on 
every hand, giving a sensible excuse for the week-end exodus. It 
varies from the A. B. C. of living, as seen in the modest, one room 
bungalow or picturesque Swiss chalet to the luxurious hundred- 
roomed mansion crowning the hills of Lenox or Aiken ; in design 
gamutting the world. What a will o' the wisp is Dame Architecture, 
she who in ancient Greece threw about the rough hewn girder, sup- 
ported by still rougher and more uncouth pillars, the delicate out- 
lined tracery of entablature and frieze, Ionic and Doric cap and 
gracefully fluted column, a beauty of design and construction that 
bids fair to last forever. 

Line of Succession. 

We read man's progress the world over, from primordial 
cavern up through hollow tree trunk shelter and tree hut of the 
African, the Icelander's igloo, the Neolithic pennpit burrow of early 
England, succeeded by the one room Saxon chimneyless dwelling,* 
the stone fortress retreat of the cliff dweller, lake-protected dwell- 
ings of Switzerland, the pueblo of the Mexican or the crude Mayan 
palace, to the stupendous sheltering walls of a Windsor or a Hohen- 
zollern, or the graceful and delicate beauty of incomparable 
Versailles. One's pulse throbs as quickly and his pride in man's 
achievement rises as high today in the presence of the ruined Pan- 
theon, that creation of man "Earth proudly wears as the best gem 
in her zone," as when it was first unveiled to acclaiming multitudes 
centuries ago. 

In America the Romanesque especially of the Eleventh and 
Twelfth centuries, resurrected and adapted to later needs by Richard- 

1 Once lost in a snowstorm in the mountains of Lebanon and rescued by the Bedouin 
sheik of the village of Kaffir Hauer, I fancied Time had turned back the dial and that we 
were sleeping on the dirt floor of an English chimneyless hall 



300 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

son and often imitated in somewhat gingerbread fashion by mediocre 
followers, has many advocates, as well as the Gothic of the Thirteenth 
to the Sixteenth Centuries, sometimes called one man stone work 
when compared with the megalithic masonry of Italy, Greece and 
Egypt and rivaling in beauty the Neoclassic of later date. In the 
Eighteenth Century Dame Architecture slept the sleep of the just, 
this being the nadir of architecture as the "Seventh Century was the 
nadir of the human mind," so absolutely without individuality was 
the period save for an occasional return to the Renaissance of France 
and Italy and to the classic grafted on the Colonial which, with high 
pillared fronts and Pantheon entablatures, graced many a country 
side. In America, in the middle of the Nineteenth Century came the 
upheaval of every known type ; an agglomeration at times of a falderal 
of ideas jumbled into a veritable grab bag in which village carpenter — 
ignoring the fact that it takes at least twenty-five trades to build a 
real house — and inexperienced architect delved and brought forth, 
among others, the square, cupola-crowned country house and the 
Gothic cottage with head hitting ceilings and jig-saw embellishments. 

Then came radical changes. The tide of departure from and 
decadence of the dignified Colonial set in, and a wave of Queen 
Anne — of far away Gothic parentage — swept over our land, interiors 
embellished and finished in varied styles, including the Eastlake and 
later the doweled and keyed Mission. Dissatisfaction was the inevit- 
able result of these nondescript productions, and architects in the 
search for something more beautiful again turned to the Colonial 
and the coeval English Georgian, and in combination with the Queen 
Anne, evolved many examples of rare beauty, the beginning of a 
real apotheosis in American architecture. The grander houses were 
replicas of Italian, French or Dutch Renaissance — a broad mantle, 
covering an occasional sin — or again, Tudor, Jacobean, Elizabethan 
or Victorian asserted its influence ; the latter, often overloaded with 
inartistic decoration, fields wherein many a gimcrack creation, the 
outcome of architectural revel license, today horrifies the beholder, 
or later the period when the suburban builder seized with avidity 
upon the Mansard, which has the single redeeming merit of chang- 
ing low-eaved attic rooms to those of high ceilings and semi-perpen- 
dicular walls. 

The limitations of unlimited wealth, aggressively self-evident 
when unguided by knowledge, are sometimes responsible for much that 
is bizarre, incomplete, and uncomfortable in the house building field. 
The small man of large means, to save a few dollars will often 
ignorantly vandalize the finest conception to the extent of thousands. 
His only safety is to leave it to that architect who really knoivs, and 
pay the bills without grumbling. 



ACME OF LIVING 301 

Acme of Living. 

Given a clearing and virgin soil, save for the steel edge of the 
woodsman and steel point of the plowman, it is the acme of living 
to reclaim and to build as one desires, absolutely untrammeled. In 
place of tangled forest and rock-strewn field, to rear a habitation 
adapted to and in harmony with climatic topography, to gather from 
the four quarters of the globe the best of earth's products and mold 
them to one's use; to master savoir faire, and no longer have plan- 
ning ever synonym compromise — this is the acme of living, the "sine 
qua nori" of house building. 

In ideal, hypercritical building, there are three essentials: 

Ample funds; ample la/id; ample time, and the job to be thor- 
oughly done must be from under the ground. Even using an 
old foundation may be a serious handicap, as it is most important 
that the house angle should suit the site, with the sun where it is 
needed and the kitchen, one bete noir of the architect, so placed as to 
neither hide an important view nor over-heat and over-odor the house. 

Remodeling may make for comfort, but effectually bars achieve- 
ment, and the completed product is always far from ideal. A year 
is not too long for planning the house, and during that year if your 
heart is in the work, you will be "bethumped with ideas," and have 
mind-built a dozen houses, and mind building is not only interest- 
ing and inexpensive, but profitable. The January house in the light 
of your December product will generally seem crude and impossible, 
and the months between may be strewn with dismantled and wrecked 
dwellings which died a-borning. A year's residential try-out while 
developing the plans gives ample time to grasp all conditions of an 
unknown neighborhood and may prevent unnecessary shrinking of 
one's bank account and heart-breaking disappointments. Buy when 
you find your ideal site, but sell before building rather than label 
the completed dwelling and its location a mistake. Keen observa- 
tion and adaptation to your special requirements are essential guides. 
Few houses meet one's ideal. With the world from which to choose, 
the owner-builder, keenly interested in his new home, strives though 
fruitlessly in the egotism of creation to lead that world if only in 
one feature, but to carelessly stray afield outside the pale of simple 
strength in avoiding anaemic architecture and a dull level of same- 
ness is often to conflict with the canons of good taste, and unduly 
blot and smear a garden of Eden. 

Life of a House. 

In building, one should aim to compass in all possible measure 
the three fundamentals of health, comfort, and idealism. In the 
planning before building days, picture and re-picture your home 
from every possible vantage ground, remembering that in our climate 
a wooden house will deteriorate yearly from three to ten per cent., 
and one of stone or brick, from two to five per cent., and that eternal 



302 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

vigilance is the price of comfortable living. A systematic inspection 
by mason, carpenter and plumber every six months is essential. Pre- 
vention will keep you well abreast, and even ahead, of all destroying 
forces. 

To be critical about one's home castle, whether an adobe dwell- 
ing, a sod-roofed dugout, or a palace, is worth while. 

Barbaric architecture and slathers of ornamentation are dan- 
gerous lodestones with which to trifle, but enthusiasm often leads 
architect, builder, or owner to play the role of copyist of past crea- 
tions. Such lapses are not open to criticism, as all the world is with 
us. Architecture was born centuries ago, and is still sisterless. 

Ferro-Cement Construction. 

Fireproof is a misnomer under certain conditions. Fill your fire- 
proof building with combustibles and let water enter to fight the 
flames, and your seemingly adamant cement, impregnable stone, and 
unyielding steel will peel, split, and crumble, while the last turns 
on itself like a squirming serpent. Is it a life marriage, this union 
of cement and iron, or will acid, attrition, vibration, and electrolysis 
disintegrate bolt head, iron binder, and rivet? This is the crux over 
which every architect is puzzling, and that architect who fails to 
reckon with the prodigious contracting power exerted by a forty 
degree below zero temperature on an iron column and girder and 
the enormous lengthening force of a one-hundred degree temperature 
will shatter both building and reputation. Cement walled and floored 
buildings are extremely difficult and very expensive to enlarge, 
change, or rebuild, especially when partially destroyed by fire. Arti- 
ficial reinforced stone in quoin, sill, and lintel, with tooled surface, 
if of the best, is permissible in brick and stone structures. The diffi- 
culty of making door and window frames set in cement walls tight 
is partially solved by insetting especially constructed non-rusting metal 
weather strips in the cement. Alternate brick headers between 
layers of hollow tile make for strength. 

Smouldering wood means less pecuniary loss than crumbling 
cement walls and twisted steel. Brick that has been through the 
fire to make it more staunch under conditions mocks at powers before 
which cement and steel grovel. Eliminate draughts in partitions 
and as far as may be on stairs, and avoid using inflammable gum 
varnish and oil saturated pigments, choosing fireproof paint instead. 
Make floors of semi-solid timbers, and with brick or hollow brick 
covered with cement exterior, hollow brick partitions, tile roofs and 
metal gutters, you are fairly near fire control that is in many ways 
preferable to the much vaunted fireproof, moisture-laden, inartistic 
structure of cement and iron. Fireproof conditions are perfectlj 
possible in a detached dwelling, unless filled with combustible 
material. Drenching a conflagration with water will often seriously 
injure, if not destroy, such a building. 



DEATH DEALING MOISTURE 303 

One objection to cement walls and floors in houses is that an 
echo may detract from the homelike atmosphere. 

Filing-Cabinet Fireproof Room. 

Slow burning construction and a low fireproof annex cover 
the owner's usual requirements, unless he decides to build a 
one-story cement affair, say 10x10x10, detached from the house, 
lined with boiler iron, and burglar-proof, electrically connected 
with the master's bedroom through pipes laid in a cement grouted 
ditch, and entirely free from all risk of burning debris which is 
bound to endanger such a room if in or annexed to a dwelling. 
Cumbersome maps, deeds, contracts, and the Long list of papers 
that may never be used, but if wanted ami readily found some- 
times save or make a fortune, and a card index showing in an instant 
where past or present needs are stored, all find a place in this impor- 
tant, thoroughly protected, and practical filing room. The lack of 
such a room and the temporary loss of an important paper once cost 
me many times the expense of a filing-cabinet fireproof-room. 

"Forest-born Houses." 

Forest-born houses, when rightly planned and constructed, are 
drier and warmer, and we think healthier, and preferable to those 
of any other material ; they also lend themselves more readily to 
homelike and artistic treatment. As science has tested its theories on 
guinea pigs ami monkeys, so makers of country houses have utmit- 
tingly tested stone and cement walled homes for horses, cattle, and 
poultry versus forest-born shelters, and found less rheumatism and 
better general health in the latter. It is good construction to veneer 
hollow brick with rived shakes. 

Death Dealing Moisture. 

An important phase of the building problem is solved when we 
so construct as to exclude moisture through the insidious avenues of 
leaking roof, wall, gable, hip, valley, balcony, window and door frame. 
The driest possible house, but more expensive, would have its exterior 
of glazed brick or glazed or ungla/ed terra cotta in color harmony 
with its surroundings. Radical? Granted, ami possibly commercial ,but 
far less so than that house built ot glass from cellar to roof-tree, that 
western-built copper house, or an octagonal or possibly gasometer 
round house. The latter scheme, if in a large building with archi- 
trave, entablature, and column, is capable of most impressive effects, 
but expensive to enlarge and ventilate, and as generally built is puny, 
bare, and often grotesque. A glaring, glazed or unglazed terra cotta 
or brick exterior should be softened by suitable vine, shrub, and tree 
planting, and, while neither tree nor shrub must shut from any house 
the health-giving rays of the sun, approaches should be so laid out 
as to give the impression of a foliage-embowered dwelling. 



304 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Veneered beauty soon vanishes, green wood shrinks, poorly 
flashed chimneys, valleys, and balconies leak, thin walls and hastily 
laid floors echo, and insecure nailings gap — the result, King Moisture 
comes into his own. 

Hidden Basic Construction. 

Hidden basic construction is too often flimsy and even 
the simplest domestic requirements ignored, the builder relying on an 
effective, decorative composition to conceal errors which should not 
occur in the most modest dwelling. I have noted within a month 
fireproof and semi-fireproof public buildings, and also what would be 
called a superior dwelling — one, a city hall with wooden studded 
and lathed partitions, another a costly library building, w T ith wooden 
cornices, entrance, and ornaments ; an expensive brick school house 
with flat, leaky shingle roof, a high class English stone house with 
wooden roof — with interior and other exterior appointments 
and effects that are glaring errors, to be recognized and criticized by 
the veriest tyro in architecture. Even after a fine house is built on 
some magnificent site poor landscaping and an unnecessary network 
of walks and paths may blemish the entire conception. 

It is a reef-strewn channel into which the optimistic amateur 
builder has boldly and recklessly headed his craft. It behooves him 
to have an expert pilot at the wheel, and a first class architect's advice 
and guidance is worth many times its cost. 

Horses vs. Houses. 

Standardizing points in houses is as essential as scheduling points 
in horses, and he who achieves the one hundred per cent, striven 
for — a goal yet unattained — has reached the alembic of ideal housing. 
Among thousands of addenda a few essentials stand out in relief 
after location, material, form and method of construction are settled. 
These are pronouncedly seen in window, door, fireplace, staircase, 
height of each story, and harmony of color treatment — even blinds 
are inanimates to grapple w T ith and conquer. Color within and 
without, as seen in roof exterior, window frame and soffit, or interior 
wall, ceiling, floor, trim, and stair, has much to do with the beauty of 
the house, and requires an artistic touch. 

How to Face and Back a House. 

The proper angle of the foundation to fit the site is a vital 
problem. Some rooms can be easily planned to corral the sun all day 
remembering that "where the sun does not come the doctor does." 
Such rooms are life memories. Neither kitchen nor stable yard 
should mar the view nor offensively saturate southwest breezes. Plan 
and build so that when more faces peer over the edge of your dining 
table and wider acquaintance knocks at your door you can make the 
inevitable additions beautiful, rather than ugly. Madame, as a rule, 
is a better authority on the location of parlor, kitchen, etc., than 



HOW TO FACE AND BACK A HOUSE 305 

the financial head of the house. Rooms must be carefully considered 
in their relation to each other, to the points of compass, and use, and 
glaring contrasts, such as Gothic interiors elbowing Colonial should 
be avoided. 

A common mistake is that of making a small house a diminutive 
copy of a large one. Possibly fine in the large conception, it is 
usually pernickety in the small. Another error is in making an uplift- 
ing, gem-site of rising ground stagger under the incubus of a house 
with stiff citified outlines. 

It is a fine thing to live a long time with the plans before 
beginning work. Comfort and convenience within are the first con- 
sideration, then the exterior, not necessarily of grandiose architecture, 
but of graceful and impressive outlines. 

A square house is cheapest, roomiest, and homeliest, and requires 
less wall to enclose a given space, and a plain pitch roof costs least, 
but the slight additional expense of the gambrel often makes a 
world of difference in beauty and livableness. 

A symmetrical roof has a uniform pitch in all its sections, usually 
as four to sixteen, this gradient making a grand water shedder and 
increasing the life of the roof. 

Square or rectangle the house if you will, but keep the propor- 
tions correct, and break walL and roof line with bay, porte cochere, 
wide overhang, porch room and eyebrow r , lift, or Gothic dormer. 
Chimney it plainly and strongly in the right places, window with 
mullioned triplets, casements and transoms, use doors in good style 
— perhaps Dutch, or with side and over lights — stain or paint 
artistically and you have a thing of beauty. Success in designing an 
attractive and practical house requires an axis, as well as strong and 
effective motifs and material adapted to the site. Individualizing 
even close to the line of criticism is desirable building and banishes 
uninteresting stereotyped construction. 

Essentials of Comfortable Planning. 

Given a big hall and living room, wide stairs; a unique dining 
room, one fine bedroom and boudoir suite, and your house is made. 
even if economy requires a kitchenette and the hall bedrooms of the 
summer hotel to keep the balance on the right side of the ledger. 
A generous porch room connected with a cement, brick or a terrazzo- 
paved terrace and a porte cochere make for comfort and appearance 
out of all proportion to their cost, and a front door just right is a 
fine home greeter. 

Foundations. 

Foundations must be squared and plumbed, aside from the 
entasis of an occasional buttress or exposed cellar wall, first treating 
cellar bottom and interior walls as well as exterior underground walls 
with tar to keep out ground air and dampness. At the foot of the 
excavation in the ditch which parallels the wall outside the cellar, 
la\ a drain pipe covered with small stones to within two feet of the 



306 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

lawn surface, leading to a blind well of sufficient size to dispose of all 
moisture. 

Think ahead ; have all material at hand. There is no better 
goad to keep the job at concert pitch, outside the silver spur, than 
a pile of lumber stacked to half story height, construction shed filled 
with barrels of cement, lime and brick, and an overflowing sand pile. 
It is human nature to dally and spin out work when material is 
scarce. 

Seven Important Levers to Raise a Modern House. 

The seven following materials, hollow brick, glazed or dead 
finish terra cotta, cement, galvanized iron lath, wire glass, steel 
I-beams, and tar, when properly used have simplified and improved 
building an hundred fold. In so important a matter as the build- 
ing of a home, it will often pay even the layman to master in a 
measure at least some of the dry details of construction, the under- 
lying "know how" of actual work to be done before one tries to even 
outline pergola, veranda, fireplace, dainty outdoor bedroom, and 
tiled conservatory, or spacious entrance hall, mantel, and staircase, all 
features delightful to dream of, plan, and execute. 

If exposed to severe gales it is better to anchor a wooden framed 
house to the ledge at each corner and projection with heavy irons 
sunk into the rock and firmly fastened in drilled holes with melted 
sulphur. This precaution gives greater solidity before the building 
is fully braced and weighted. There should also be a prodigal use 
of I-beams, and posts and stirrups of iron, concealed and fire pro- 
tected by cement, or hollow brick. 

Woods. 

It's interesting to know that a king post holds up the ridge 
and centres the collar beams, which in turn are steadied by the queen 
post at each end ; that this latter must rest on a solid partition wall 
or other support amply able to hold it, while trimmer heads and tail 
beams form and strengthen stair and chimney openings; that white 
pine boards shrink but little compared with spruce, chestnut and 
N. C. pine, and that spruce boards unless thoroughly nailed are apt 
to curl at the edges, sliver and wear out quickly ; that beautiful hard 
red birch which is more durable than even oak under foot decays 
rapidly when exposed to the weather, and unless thoroughly kiln- 
dried, warps, shrinks, and draws, as is also the case with chestnut, 
but that both, nevertheless, are entitled to wide use, the latter because 
of its beautiful grain and the former for its veined texture, rich 
mottled coloring, and close resemblance to mahogany which can also 
be fairly imitated in softer white wood. Cypress makes an excellent 
weather wood, especially for frame, sash, belt course, soffit, and trim. 
Locust and chestnut are two fine underground woods. 

The objection to chestnut on the basis that it is apt to be wormy 
can be overcome by selection of the fittest, or a dose of creosote will 



SEVEN LEVERS TO RAISE A HOVSE 307 

prevent farther ravages if its use does not interfere with future color 
treatment. 

A difference in Boor levels, when not so frequent or great as to 
give opportunity for accident, increases the impressiveness of a house, 
just as a plant or fountain rightly placed improves the whole aspect 
of a room and a loggia and porte cochere add value to an exterior 
far in excess of their cost. 

If on a side hill — and the side hill house is the most economical 
to build — a cut off, stone filled trench is laid a dozen feet above the 
cellar wall and connected with side drainage trenches, straw being 
bedded on stones below the earth topping, an essential in making a 
dry cellar. 

The Arched Under House. 

One of the most pleasing houses I ever built was arched-under. 
Taking advantage of a side hill location, a small entrance vestibule 
was arranged from which one ascended broad steps to the main hall, 
which connected with living room, library and den, all on the first 
floor. The kitchen, butler's pantry, and dining room were on the 
lower road level, reached also by a stairway from the living hall. 
This kept culinary appointments and kitchen mechanics remote from 
gala and living rooms, while allowing more impressive dimensions 
for the latter. 

In another under-hill house was the garage, with gasoline in a 
near by earth-buried tank. 

Stone, Brick, and Cement. 

For stone work, the boulder laid-up-rustic, cement bedded, is 
satisfactory, or rubble, — coursed or random — broken ashler-random- 
face, or range laid smooth cut quarry — in fact any stone harder than 
soft limestone, certain grades of which disintegrate more or less 
rapidly in this climate. Foundations should total at least twelve 
inches wider than the superstructure. 

Tackling a spring or water course in cellar or cesspool is a try- 
ing problem. I once spent nine hundred dollars in blasting and 
attempting to stopper a boiling spring at the bottom of a rock-quar- 
ried excavation intended for a cesspool. With the house gridironed 
by pipes connected with a community reservoir, the living spring 
was a travesty. We had better luck with a water course in the cel- 
lar, having no ledge with which to contend. Digging sufficiently 
deep and underdraining at an incline settled the difficulty. 

Cellars. 

A stone cellar wall so built that the stones extend from the 
exterior to the interior, binding the wall, needs extra tarring treat- 
ment; otherwise these stones add their quota of moisture to the 
water drawn from the ground by capillary attraction, encouraging 
those insidious foes, fungoid growth and ground air. Weather beaten 



308 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

and cracked rough stone taken from old walls should not be used 
in the construction of a fine house. Their proper place is in the 
underdraining of land and roads. The old-fashioned method of cover- 
ing the foundation wall with moisture-proof slate or blue stone slabs 
before the house wall is built is still good. It is a fatal mistake to 
tolerate stone cellar walls laid up dry, the surface only smeared with 
cement. Moisture and rodents can only be balked by stones embedded 
in cement, which is vastly improved by being mixed with crude oil. 
Jogs and angles in foundation walls add largely to their cost. A pro- 
jecting water table flush with a cement sanitary angled gutter a foot 
wide on the surface of the ground will carry drip away from the 
foundation. 

Ground Air. 

Nowhere inside the house must tile set in cement be laid directly 
on the earth, however well drained or gravelly the soil (unless 
possibly in a conservatory) as ground air and moisture will, under 
certain weather conditions, work to the surface. I once injured an 
otherwise attractive inglenook by overlooking this fact. 

Cement and metal under conditions will carry sound, therefore it 
is desirable to deaden the floors with asbestos, seaweed, paper, hair, felt, 
or other non-conducting material. All overhangs should be thor- 
oughly deadened to prevent cold from entering the house. Mineral 
wool is excellent for this use. 

Damp-proof Walls. 

An outside wall of brick or stone is made damp-proof by being 
thoroughly painted on its interior and exterior where it is buried 
in the ground with water-proof paint or tar, and must be furred for 
plastering. Confined air makes a warm blanket. Air space will 
carry sound unless curbed with baffles, but is a positive preventer of 
condensation. Watch closely during construction for crevices in 
walls and about door and window frames. Unless cemented most 
thoroughly, a stone or cement house is a cold damp house. Air spac- 
ing is its salvation. Wooden frames set in stone need special care 
to keep out wind, cold, and moisture. Calking crevices with oakum 
saturated with white lead decreases coal consumption. 

If necessary to lay brick in freezing weather, dry brick laid in 
cement mortar, with but a small quantity of lime, and joints neatly 
struck, gives the best job. Care should be taken that there is no jar 
before the cement hardens, otherwise the brick will at once loosen. 
In warm weather brick should be wet before being laid. The pic- 
turesque appearance of rock faced brick is marred by affinity for 
dust and liability to damage by friction. Its main advantage aside 
from the effect of lights and shadows produced is that the broken 
surface prevents the annoying window sill drip that ahvays mars the 
front of a brick building. 

Water-proofing brick walls with a colorless solution does not 



GROUND AIR 309 

change the appearance of the brick and prevents frozen moisture 
from scaling mortar joints or dampness from entering the house, thus 
removing the one possible objection to brick construction. Harvard, 
Roman, and tapestry brick are all good. 

The so-called "mud brick" of commerce is more or less a water 
absorber, but has holding strength in the wall; its rough surface 
absorbs the mortar even better than the smoother face, but harder, 
machine made, piano-wire-cut brick. Headers and stretchers, if of 
suitable contrasting hue, and laid in Flemish or English bond, make 
an effective building, but meddling with contrasts requires infinite 
care and skill. The amateur often ruthlessly "stomps" "where angels 
fear to tread." 

In a non-earthquake country, hollow tile covered with cement 
is ideal construction if made damp-proof with tar or rough paint and 
air spaces, and is more serviceable than stucco on wire or wooden lath. 
A double hollow tile wall is best if brick tied. 

Floor Deadening. 

In deadening floors, an excellent light weight combination is a 
mixture of cement, sawdust, and ashes. It brings but little extra 
strain on the timbers, keeps out cold and noise, and is along fireproof 
lines. 

If the room immediately over the kitchen is used for other than 
storage, the floor should be deadened in order to bar kitchen heat 
and noises and there must be an air space between the wall of this 
room and the kitchen chimney. 

In all cementing of exterior walls, wire lath should be nailed 
on eight inch centres to avoid sagging, which is bound to occur when 
nailed to the sixteen inch spaced studding. V-irons will give 
a half inch air space between sheathing and cement. They hold the 
wire and cement away from the shrinking wood, and tend to prevent 
cracks. This method is less expensive than hollow brick construction, 
but not as durable. 

The cement cellar floor should be four inches thick, made of 
three inches of concrete set on a bed of sand. A good concrete mix- 
ture is one part cement, three parts sand, five parts broken stone, and 
when set immediately finished with one inch Portland cement made 
of one part cement to three parts sand. 

If steps and open loggia are not of stone or brick, durability 
requires that they be of reinforced cement. Rounding very slightly 
the edge of a cement step will delay inevitable nicking. 

Heavy buttresses at the corners of a rough foundation wall are 
good, especially for a high veranda. As simple a thing as a piazza 
post wrongly placed will seriously mar an otherwise beautiful house. 
An entasis effect flaring outward at the bottom of an exposed founda- 
tion wall gives stability and beauty. 



310 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Flying Arch. 

A flying stone arch or two supporting a porch room or a flight 
of steps, if properly built, will be found far more ornamental than 
the usual plain arch. 

Stone, brick and cement are the best materials for the sleepless 
arch ; wooden arches except for decorative purposes are impractical. 

If brick construction is used, the water table can be formed 
by corbeling and drawing inward five or six courses above the stone 
foundation. Soffits under the eaves and big bracket supports are 
preferably covered with cement on galvanized wire lath, or hollow 
brick, but this necessitates an absolutely tight roof to prevent the 
cement from scaling. A porch room is much improved by beams over 
a cement ceiling. 

Exterior iron work must be made absolutely rust-proof by gal- 
vanizing and thorough painting. This also prevents staining of 
adjacent brick and stone. 

All wire lath should be galvanized for outside work, as plain 
iron will rust even if cement covered, and painting it is but a make- 
shift. 

Iron posts in the cellar (supporting iron girders) 'with suitable 
foundations, take less room than brick or stone but are more easily 
damaged by fire than are brick. Both post and girder are nearer fire- 
proof if encircled with 34" mcn niesh of galvanized wire and evenly 
swathed in cement. 

Rat-Proof House. 

Tf the house is of timber construction, use large sized timber. 
Rat-proof at sill line by filling in with rough grouting, brick, or 
stone, and curb the fire risk at plate line end of floor timbers 
by stopping draughts and filling between studs with odd pieces of 
joist. Extra crippling is an additional advantage in hanging heavy 
pictures. Reinforcing any specially important bearing by two or 
four inch wrought iron pipe filled with cement as extra supporting 
pillars with wide flanges gives added strength. 

The sanitary cement base is an advantage in cellar, laundry, 
kitchen, back halls, and closets. If wire screening is inset in cement 
of floor and wall, rodents pass by on the other side, and even cock- 
roaches and water bugs are unknown. 

Cement Expansion. 

If cement walks are used, they must have below frost line foun- 
dations, and each cement block should be cut through its entire thick- 
ness to allow for expansion and contraction, and an asphalt expansion 
joint inserted every fifty feet is a good precaution. Mere marking 
will not avoid cracking. Secure footing is obtained by slightly cor- 
rugating (crandalling) the surface, preferably in some geometrical 
design, and a convex surface makes a dry walk. 



WINDOWS 311 

Curbs should be edged with metal corner bead to prevent a 
dilapidated appearance when nicked or broken, as they surely will be 
in time. 

It is a convenience to have the number of the house, and in public 
buildings the name, metal inset or cut in cement walk near the gate, 
and the lower straight iron tie of the gate brace formed into a 
foot-scraper. 

Windows. 

Clustered windows are as effective as clustered chimneys, and a 
large wide-eyed window placed at correct angle in veranda roof 
will give additional light. Two feet six inches above floor line is the 
rule for setting first-story windows, and a trifle higher for second 
and third. 

Deeply embrasured grouped windows can be placed in a thin 
walled house by building the entire side of the room inward a foot 
or more, balancing the space on each window side with a convenient 
and artistically fronted ambry. 

Broad deep window sills are convenient for frond or flower, 
and also serve as a sun-couch for the "necessary and harmless cat." 

Pockets in window frames when plate glass is used if made extra 
large allows the substitution of iron for the more expensive leaden 
weights. 

There is no more important matter than the proper design and 
location of doors and windows. Afterthought doors and windows 
are generally expensive. Extra lipping and rabbeting of both is a 
necessity, and double balcony doors are fitted with the knuckle and 
elbow joint at parting strip. 

Rooms should be planned with due regard to their furnishing. 
For instance, refreshing sleep comes to some only when beds are 
placed north and south. Preferably no bed should directly face a 
window ; dressing mirrors must have good light, convenient ingress 
and egress should be considered, and the throne of the fire king so 
located as to centre his group of devotees, instead of being incon- 
veniently close to doors and windows. 

The entrance, whether an ornamental projecting porch, or a 
recess, gives to the house either a hall mark of distinction or a black 
mark of mediocrity. Columns, architraves, or coat of arms, in 
wood or stone, make a distinguished entrance, framing a door that 
should always bespeak a message of welcome. 

Imprisoning June. 

We once used i:i the wall of a dining room a plate glass framed 
panel ten by ten feet, edged by a quaint postern-gate, beyond the glass a 
jungle of flowers and vines, a bit of semi-wild mid-summer garden, 
pathless and potless, a tangle of color springing upward from 
greensward, glass imprisoned in the midst of an ice and snow-bound 



312 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

winter landscape. In a corner of the jungle were a half dozen 
sandal-wood trees between groups of midget Japanese evergreens cen- 
turies old when the keel of the caravel Santa Maria reached the shores 
of San Salvador. The greatest picture gallery in the State boasted 
nothing so fine as our ten foot square framed nature-picture, chang- 
ing with the seasons, and replenished from time to time from the 
greenhouse, all flower pots and boxes being concealed in mossy bank. 

Vines versus Wooden Exteriors. 

Do not give that matched board portable porch horror a resting 
place. The fancy for thus marring a beautiful home is unaccount- 
able. Settled, windowed, or screened permanent porches or a glassed- 
in semi-conservatory veranda entrance are attractive solutions of the 
porch problem. Against stone or brick one must avoid as far as 
possible the incongruities of wood, often emphasized still more by 
inappropriate painting in porch room, veranda, bay, and porte cochere, 
adjuncts to be built at all hazards, but planned to fit into the whole. 
If to be covered with vines they should be oiled instead of painted. 
With care re-oiling will not injure them. 

The pergola and even a modest belvedere add to the appear- 
ance of a property much more than their cost, and the former often 
saves an unfortunate situation. Ugly lines can be concealed, bare 
outlines broken, and high, stilted, and box-like structures lowered 
and widened thereby. An effective but more expensive pergola is 
made by the cross members sweeping downward a couple of feet 
with an under curve on the outer side. Broad spaces can be spanned 
and still kept uniform by sloping the wider timbers at bearing ends 
to one width. 

An Attractive Entrance. 

Calling on a railroad magnate some years ago in his wonder- 
fully beautiful Fifth Avenue home opposite the park, we climbed 
to his attic den by a circular marble staircase that cost a fortune, 
while another fortune was represented in the leaded windows, rarely 
carved woodwork, mosaic floors, pictures, and statuary, yet after all 
these years, but one feature of the house whose cost, compared to 
the above, was as pennies to dollars, is clearly recalled, and that is 
the vestibuled entrance which led through a labyrinth of banked 
palms interspersed with floral gems of rich and delicate coloring, 
the air laden with divine melody from silver-throated songsters, who 
lived their lives in this bower of beauty. Remembering that exotic 
entrance, when the opportunity came, I struck a duplicate, though 
minor key in one of my vestibule entrance halls, in size twelve by 
eighteen feet, centred with a red tiled walk five feet wide. Grassy 
banks, waving fronds, and swirl of bloom stamped it forcibly on the 
mind of every caller, whether mendicant, stranger, or bosom friend, 



SHINGLES AND THATCH 313 

through that touch of nature that "makes the whole world kin," and 
to my mind far outshone expensive pillared, beamed and paneled 
entrance halls. 

The "Over" in Building. 

The "over" in building is a familiar reef to the enthusiast. An 
over-windowed house, aside from its appearance of frail wall area, 
blows hot or cold as temperature dictates. Over decoration, as seen 
in the lavish use of gold and silver, red, green, and yellow, in wall, 
ceiling and colored cornice — anything and everything to detract from 
expressive paintings, fine etchings, rare tapestry, and century framed 
oak, often plunge the new house into the mire of mediocrity. Accen- 
tuate door, window, wainscoting and mantel, but avoid the "over." 

Shingles vs. Thatch. 

If buildings are shingled, shingles must be stain-dipped, not 
painted, for paint dries in ridges, dams back water, and quickly rots 
the shingles. Do not be persuaded to thatch barns and outbuildings 
in reaching for the picturesque ; vermin and fire are risks, to say noth- 
ing of possible leaks. I've seen more than one thatched building con- 
demned and re-roofed with shingles or tile. England, recognizing 
the extra fire hazard in some sections, has passed laws against build- 
ing thatched roofs. A coat of whitewash gives fair thatch protection 
and is a short job with a whitewash gun. Avoid as you would a 
pestilence the diamond panel in shingle work and the grosser outrage 
of a colored design on a slate roof. Odd modes of roof and side 
shingling can be introduced along pleasing lines, but, like many an 
innovation, it requires thought to avoid the grotesque. 

The best artistic result to be obtained from shingles is the 
rounded thatch on dormer and eaves, expensive, but unparalleled for 
effect. Six or seven lappings of shingles laid in curving lines across 
the entire roof give the nearest approach to a thatch effect in wood. 

The upper mullion in a gable, if inset three feet, with sides 
rounded and covered with tooth-edged shingles, with straight header 
and base, is about the best shingle gable effect I ever tried. The 
Boston hip takes the place of the old ridge board, but shingles split 
and blow off if carelessly nailed, some splitting more readily than 
others, therefore care must be taken in their selection. While narrow 
shingles take longer to lay they make a tighter and better roof than 
the extra wide. None over six inches wide should be laid on a roof 
unless they are the hand rived shakes of Colonial days. Cut nails 
hold a shingle in place better than a wire nail and prolong the life 
of the roof. The wire nail is a good friend of the shingle merchant. 
Single nailing of shingles has advantages. 

In a high house a double banded shingle or cement belt gives 
relief to the surface and picturesquely shadows and lowers the house, 
while the gable end that bulges six or eight inches to a point three 



314 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

feet below the peak, the lower edge slightly curved outward in hori- 
zontal line and edged with toothed shingles, or the gable that con- 
caves not only at peak but along the whole verge edge gives beauty 
and variety. 

Shingles fastened on shingle laths when wet dry out more 
quickly and last longer than when laid on boarding, but indoor heat 
is best conserved and exterior heat or cold excluded by covering the 
entire roof with T. & G. boarding, on top of which is laid fireproof 
paper generously lapped, then shingle laths, then the shingles, allow- 
ing extra air space. 

In a severe climate a ceiled roof under the rafters, protected by 
fireproof paper, gives an air chamber, added warmth, and is easily 
laid before plastering, which, for still greater comfort, should be 
furred out an inch from the rafters. Close valley shingling looks 
neater and stops leaks, but curtails the life of the shingle. 

A Stone Roof. 

The enthusiasm of our Hibernian thatcher whose arbored 
summer house was a source of chagrin to all base imitators tempted 
us to let him loose in our quarry and stone roof the ice house — we 
never thought of its melting the ice faster. It was a small affair, 
three-fourths underground on a side hill, with roof frame of heavy 
logs. The greenish tinge of moss and rain streak, and a sprinkling 
of thrifty growing stonecrop gave that roof a name for sylvan beauty 
far and near. The roughness of Pelasgic walls was softened with 
running ivy and woodbine that had been protected while building. 
A rough board and hay-filled lining curbed the heat of summer on 
that rare stone roof partly shielded by plant life. 

Tile Roofing, Balconies and Skylight. 

Tile makes a desirable roof, especially the mission, but the under 
covering must be such as to prevent leaks. Unserviceable paper or 
canvas has canceled many a tile contract. 

Rafters for tile roofs should be at least two by eight (2x8), 
better still two by nine (2x9), in valleys two by twelve (2x 12), 
reinforced by supporting posts, partitions, and extra strong and well 
nailed collar beams. 

If red tile is laid on main roof, avoid repeating it on a south 
veranda, owing to sun reflection. Glare can be softened by painting 
it in some subdued color, using tile of neutral shade, or covering 
with thoroughly paint soaked canvas. Copper makes an excellent 
substitute for tile, its tendency to split under weather changes being 
curbed by ridge-seaming it every eighteen inches, but if a house is 
isolated and left unprotected it is a temptation to thieves to unroof 
it, as it is to steal copper boilers and brass pipe. 

Roofs covered with sheet lead, zinc, or tin, the latter painted on 
' both sides, make serviceable head pieces. Copper flashing does good 



TIMBERING, FRAMING, ETC. 315 

work around chimneys, at roof line, in all valleys, under and 
over windows and on balconies. Few leaks are more difficult to stop 
than those of a poorly built balcony, the door sill of which requires a 
steep pitch. It is said that in Ontario's rare dry climate unpainted tin 
on the exterior is bright after a dozen years' service, hut the usual 
rule in other climes is a thick coat of paint on both upper and under 
sides, repainting exteriorly every two years. Canvas roofs if covered 
too thickly with paint will crack. 

The roof skylight, that inartistic protuberance so apt to lenk 
if not properly flashed, or if not securely fastened liable to centre the 
lawn, can be generally entirely hidden behind chimney, dormer or 
ridge, leaving contours uninjured, and both overhead and under foot 
skylights should invariably be of substantial wire glass of extra thick- 
ness for durability and fire protection. 

Roof House and Roof Garden. 

A roof house of one room and a roof garden might connect with 
a prophet's chamber, leaping from questionable experiment to a 
glorious success, but because of limitations should be worked out on 
a flat roof Moorish house. 

The scheme of a Colonial one room cottage screened 'mid vines 
and fronted by a small old-fashioned garden placed on a cement floored 
flat roof lifted in a measure above the turmoil of earth, made an 
ever remembered guest room. 

Iron roofs and sides for outbuildings unless kept thoroughly 
painted readily succumb to rust and decay, and are more suited to 
commercial purposes except in an inexpensive garage. 

Timbering, Framing, Etc. 

Proper sizing of timber goes a long way toward preventing wavy 
floors and uneven side walls, and when, as is often the case in the 
attic, there is but one floor, it is vastly improved by the usual method 
of selecting the best boards from the large quantity of sheathing used 
for under floors, siding, and other portions of the house. 

Floor beams set in a brick, stone, or cement wall should be cut 
at an angle to insure their falling without prying out the wall in 
case of fire. This treatment also checks dry rot. 

If metal bridging is used, it must be supplemented with wood, 
which hugs closer and firmer, and cannot rust. Thorough strutting 
of timbers is imperative. 

Tie beams at plate line and in gables should be plentiful, and 
crippling cross-herringboned. It makes firmer bracing, and in shrink- 
ing holds better than when set straight. Doubling every third or 
fourth beam when a span is from eighteen to twenty feet is necessary 
and makes a stronger girt or girder than single beams of equal size, 
each piece of wood having a different grain. They should be slightly 
crowned to allow for the usual sagging. Scantlings, purlins, 
and wall and roof plates must be of suitable size, and free from 



316 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

shakes, and studding well toe-nailed. Bridle irons on floor beams, 
strap irons on rafters, and tie rods through plates are essential safe- 
guards. 

Cutting and tenoning of timber, unless done with judgment, 
often defeats its purpose by weakening the support, but all joinings 
of plate and sill should be halved. 

The cantilever principle, as well as the under brace, will make 
the porch sleeping room reaching into tree top or open absolutely 
secure. 

Overhang, whether in roof or veranda flooring, adds valuable 
area with the sanve foundation expense. Nailing of bridging to both 
sides of floor beams is left until just before plastering to fasten floor 
beams when and where they have shrunk. 

If one objects to iron beams, which in all cases cannot be satis- 
factorily fastened to wood, Georgia pine girders may be substituted. 
A flitch or sandwich beam made of either one or two three-eighth 
inch iron plates twelve inches in width firmly bolted each side of or 
between the girders or beams their entire length stiffens a building 
tremendously, and trusses made from one inch iron rods set up w T ith 
a turnbuckle placed between two by twelve inch planks well bolted 
together have the same effect. 

The ends of house rafters and pergolas look better if in some- 
what similar design and false rafter ends close jointed. In a house 
of superior build, outside studs should be two by six, or three by four. 

If cramped for closet space, studs can be set flatwise unless they 
support floor timbers. Under no circumstances should timber ends 
be completely embedded in solid masonry. If the end of a timber 
is hermetically sealed, the chance of infective dry rot exists and is 
almost a certainty where there is dampness. A small air space at the 
timber end is a necessary safeguard. 

The furring down of ceilings in bathrooms, even as low as seven 
feet, will make them compact and more easily heated beside giving 
an overhead space for open or secret closets, and allowing of tiling 
to ceiling line at slight additional expense. This satisfactorily settles 
the difficult question of how to treat bathroom walls and also avoids 
capping the tiled wainscot. Projecting crowning tile is liable to be 
laid irregularly and in time works loose. 

Diagonal board exterior walls (provided there are not too many 
openings), bringing boards together in the shape of a V, forming 
an additional side-thrust brace. In a gambrel roof this treatment is 
especially desirable as it is weak construction until firmly braced. 
In smaller buildings preference may be given to balloon construction 
with ledger board supports notched in studding instead of braced 
frame and plates. 



GUTTER PROBLEM 317 

In some localities diplomacy is required to banish alcohol, and 
keep the men contented when the evergreen roof-tree nailed to the 
ridge proclaims that the roof is raised, but a small present generally 
solves this difficulty. 

Floors. 

Diagonal the rough floor as in sheathing. It means more labor 
and material, but gives a far better braced building, a firmer grip on 
finish floor, and there is less chance of buckling or getting out of shape 
than when both floors are laid straight. 

The accurate furring-up of an uneven under floor is a job the 
mediocre carpenter invariably shirks, as he does the knee-aching task 
of scraping the finish floor surface. Both are essential, and omission 
of the former will cause even furniture of the best construction to 
appear wobbly and a poorly finished floor makes a fine dirt gripper 
and retainer. 

A partial over-floor covering either of expensive half-inch cork 
boarding or the cheaper cork matting — both non-absorbent and soft 
under foot, without the drawing objection to rubber — will ease ach- 
ing feet of cook and laundress and take the chill and slip out of a 
tiled bathroom. Service room floors can be made fireproof with 
patent cement flooring. Hardwood floors mean from one-half to 
one-third less work to satisfy good housekeeping. 

Stud crippling midway between floor and ceiling not only braces 
and ties, but stops fire draught. 

Cut, square headed nails are preferable to wire for flooring, and 
blind nailing is essential. 

The effect of a level long distance floor means the passing of the 
door saddle, that retainer of dust, disturber of carpets, and space 
shortener, but its use where rugs and carpets closely edge openings 
means a tighter fitting door. If the mat is inset there is no conflict 
with the front door. 

Convent cell and hospital ward simplicity should in a measure 
guide for health the mind that plans our sleeping rooms, yet com- 
fort must reign. 

Sound readily carries through partitions and flooring unless 
guarded against, hence no false beams should be placed until ceil- 
ings are plastered, nor may one commit the error of having the floor 
or floor beams of one story form the ceiling of another. Heavy felt- 
ing between floors will not entirely eliminate noise. 

The Gutter Problem. 

If the concealed cypress gutter is used, it should be \-shape 
within to prevent ice from splitting it, and should of course be metal 
lined. Leaks occur through imperfect roof covering and sides as in 
split shingle and clapboard, in outside chimney breast, top, bottom, 
and sides of windows and doors, in carelessly flashed valleys and 



318 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

chimneys, ventilating pipes, balconies, and clogged gutters and occa- 
sionally even in the opening used for an overflow pipe in attic storage 
tank. 

Copper gutters and spouts, preferably sixteen ounce, properly 
fastened to a house and deeply grounded in the moist earth, answer the 
purpose of a lightning rod, which mars the appearance of any build- 
ing, and is today seldom used, as it is a questionable protection. 

The gutter problem is surely exasperating. Ice, dirt, and leaves 
choke gutters and spout-heads and force water upward and sidewise 
under shingles, tile, or slate, whence through cracks it percolates 
inward, sometimes from a long distance, marring wall and ceiling, 
paper and tapestry in most aggravating fashion. The ugly half circle 
hanging gutter solves this problem, but unless of copper rusts about as 
soon as the arris zinc-lined cypress. Crimping a leader prevents its pos- 
sible bursting from ice. Short gutters over entrances, and a shallow, 
turfed, stone-underdrained ditch with a few spout-heads where val- 
ley rivulets clash will help to keep inviolate and attractive roof con- 
tours — the architect's sacrificial altar and most sacred fetich — and is 
a fairly satisfactory solution of a serious question. 

Chimneys and Fireplaces. 

It is difficult to realize that the chimney, a roof-tree's crowning 
glory, was unknown in Rome before the Fourteenth Century and 
for hundreds of years in England the louvre or roof opening was 
its only substitute. 

Grouped or big stacked chimneys are most satisfactory, and the 
tall, slim, solitary spindle should be fattened to harmonize with a 
massive structure, in fact, the ordinary house or bungalow is often 
improved by a stout chimney. 

Chimneys should be built of hard brick with preferably an 
eight-inch wall, or, better still, two four inch walls iron-tied, and 
with a two inch air space and ample ventilating flues, all fire flues 
being tile lined and tile collar joints plastered and set with cement. 
The crane, if one is to be used, can be built in the fireplace while the 
chimney is in course of construction. Cement covered chimneys, and 
occasionally brick, are apt to show lime efflorescence, especially in 
the spring — removable by a diluted acid bath. Stone or terra cotta 
combined with common or finished brick is as a rule very satisfactory. 
A scaling cement chimney is a blot both on the landscape and the 
builder's escutcheon. Chimneys built above the ridge with cut 
broken ashler or rubble stone, as architectural license may allow, 
require special care in flashing. 

The best sand is sharp and gritty, its face unsmoothed by action 
of the sea or running water, and should not contain much salt. 

Chimneys draw better with flue lining of round rather than 
square tile, as evidenced by experiments in certain industries requir- 
ing enormous heat. Foundations should be carried to bed rock if 



CURE FOR SMOKING FIREPLACES 319 

possible, or at least to hard pan — in this case having cement and 
rubble foundation — and below frost line. The chimney breast should 
be furred out with fireproof lath before plastering to avoid damp- 
ness and discoloration of walls and decorations. Thimbles and stop- 
pers in cellar and garret and far away rooms are sometimes a con- 
venience. 

In pointing up, excellent exterior effects can be obtained by the 
use of gray, red, black, or white mortar, or raked-out joints of one- 
half an inch in depth and thickness between the bricks, as preferred. 
Coal efficiency is lessened when heating flues, especially in thin chim- 
neys, are allowed to hug exterior walls too closely. 

To so locate a chimney as not to clash with roof lines requires 
skill, but when well done adds much to the beauty of the house, and 
he who studies chimney contours and makes a wise selection in design 
and color will be well repaid. 

The rough stone, dust collecting chimney is frequently a dismal 
failure, except in appearance, and is suitable only for porch room, 
bungalow, and possibly billiard room or den. It can be made useful 
and ornamental. Flues shoidd be from ten to twelve inches in 
diameter, and all crevices thoroughly filled with cement. It is espe- 
cially necessary to use tile flues in stone chimneys. 

In fireplaces width, height and strength in design and material 
were the ear marks for generations until the discovery of coal in the 
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries dwarfed and narrowed their 
beauty as the era of grate, stove, and furnace dawned. 

It is a convenience if fireplaces are provided with iron covered 
ash flues and connected with the cellar, but the outlet must be care- 
fully guarded from rubbish, which increases fire hazard. An ash 
flue, in itself a convenience, was the cause of one of our most disastrous 
fires. The man of all w y ork carelessly left the iron cellar flue door 
open, and live coals reached inflammable debris. A cellar fire is the 
worst kind of a fire, and when fairly started leaps under favoring 
conditions to the roof-tree in short order. Chimney flues should be 
provided with iron throats and dampers. Building a fireplace hearth 
above the level of the floor increases fire risk, even though protected 
by a fender. A brick partition centreing a fireplace is a novelty. 

In forming hearth arches, the skew-back, made from 4x6 joist, 
halved to form a triangle, should be nailed against the two long sides 
of the hearth. This will prevent any displacement of the brick arch 
through shrinking of wooden floor beams. 

Cure for Smoking Fireplaces. 

Chimneys can be made to draw by having a narrow opening at 
flue ingress, and providing a smoke shelf, not less than six inches 
wide the full width of the fireplace, projecting just below the flue 
edging the fireplace opening. If the back of the fireplace is curved 
outward three or four inches at the top toward the room, air thus 



320 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

forced more directly over the flames will heat quickly, hence rise 
rapidly in the flue, while the tendency of damp, dead, chimney air 
to sink into a room is checked by the flue shelf, and hot air mixing 
with it forces it up chimney. Smoking chimneys can be made to 
draw with this treatment if fire opening is not over high — say two 
and one-half to three feet. This construction also conserves heat. A 
big mouthed and big flued chimney will usually draw after the damp, 
cold air becomes warm, but is a heat waster of the first magnitude. 

A deep, broad-mouthed fireplace gives warmth and paints a 
glorious seven-toned wall picture that gladdens man's inmost being, 
but often makes an uncomfortably draughty room as it pulls the 
air with giant force up-chimney. We semi-shackled the draught, as 
well as a goodly portion of the ninety per cent, heat thus lost, by 
installing an iron damper and baffles ; — less beauty, less flame, more 
heat, more comfort. 

Use without abuse of the health-yielding chimney and stair flue 
draught is true beneficence, for disease has no more relentless foe 
than pure air. Forty days without food forty years ago failed to kill 
Dr. Tanner who at this writing is very much alive, yet four minutes 
in the black hole of Calcutta when it reached a certain condition 
would have immediately changed the abiding place of his soul. 

A Freak Fireplace. 

One of our experiments possibly open to objection was to so 
arch at a low level a fireplace between two gala rooms that an open 
fire answered for both. A reredos lowered at will made a fire back 
for each room, and gave when desired seclusion to each, as well as 
better draught. 

Veranda and Conservatory. 

See that the veranda is extended beyond the house wall to catch 
that southwest breeze, and build an open balustrade for coolness. 

The wide covered veranda requires a flat upper balcony pro- 
jecting from side wall, a metal or canvas roof under these conditions 
being necessary. In fact, it is good planning in order to get ample 
sun and light in winter to have the veranda roof high, using, if 
needed, awnings on the front or a grille to annul the stilted look of 
a high flat roof. If facing south or east, a sun-room or second story 
conservatory on this roof adds in comfort and appearance far more 
than its cost, and if built during house construction is an inexpensive 
luxury. 

More sunshine will be obtained if the outer half or third of the 
veranda roof is pergolad, as the awning can be rolled back on cloudy 
days, and removed in winter. Proper bracing and cantilever beaming 
make it feasible to construct the sun-room-addition. 

It is good building to cover the floor of an outdoor balcony with 
canvas, as on a steamer deck, laid in wet paint and oil. It should be 
fastened with copper tacks. One we thus treated is still in good con- 



VERANDA AND CONSERVATORY 321 

dition, with occasional painting, after twenty-five years' wear. Plat- 
forms of concrete laid over well seasoned timber will outlast half a 
dozen wooden floors, but should be reinforced by twisted mesh screen 
wire of at least one eighth to one quarter inch caliper ; they will then 
be independent of the rough wooden under flooring. If a wooden 
floor is preferred, white pine set with leaded joints, and painted and 
with the usual fall to each foot is the best. Next in choice comes fir. 
North Carolina pine if exposed to the weather will last but five years 
and sometimes only two or three. 

Glassing in the porch in winter is today almost a necessity, and 
when installing the heating plant extra pipes, including water pipes, 
which can be capped, should be laid to it as well as to the sun room 
and second story balcony or conservatory. Radiators can at any time 
be connected at moderate expense if not installed in the beginning. 

Plastering. 

Whether to use plaster board must be decided according to 
preference and season. It is desirable in cold weather, or if crowded 
for time; a barrel, dome, or coved ceiling, however, would render its 
use impossible. Beaver board has limitations, but fits well into the 
bungalow realm. One gets bracing strength in a Wooden lath, though 
requiring more plaster, but wire lath is along fireproof lines, and 
curtails warping and swelling. Dry wooden lath should be sprinkled. 

It is best to use angle irons where corners are not rounded in 
the plaster, relegating to the past the acorn-tipped corner bead or 
other wooden substitutes. 

All walls must be thoroughly plastered to the floor and wain- 
scoting, trim and woodwork — always the kiln dried species — painted 
on the back before being nailed in place, otherwise, especially on an 
outside wall, panels will crack and warp. It goes without saying that 
trim placed against plaster containing any moisture is a building crime. 

Lime must not be of the damaged sort that pock marks and 
drops off in small specks. The mason minus a conscience or care- 
less of his trust will often use too little plaster of paris and too 
much lime to save a few cents in gauging, resulting in a powdery 
wall surface that rubs off. Freezing produces much the same result. 
The correct mixture of hair is a necessity, but patent plaster applied 
in new ways is rapidly taking the place of old material and methods. 
Sound carriers should be avoided. 

To get a suitable clinch, one must insist upon enough pressure to 
force plaster through the crevices, especially on wooden lathing. The 
first coat must be well scratched to hold the second or brown coat, and 
the finish skim coat whether the job is two or three coat work, evenly 
surfaced to show a smooth, straight edge for trim, untrue placing of 
which pillories for all time a careless mason. Plastered ceilings, often 
dangerous shams, should be covered with canvas or burlap before 
decorating, eliminating the always present risk and possible disaster 



$22 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

of a falling ceiling, but if plastered with wood pulp they rarely loosen. 
A barrel ceiling is unique in a long hall. 

Cement can be used instead of plaster in many cases. In building 
walls in damp ground it should be water-proofed by /nixing with 
crude oil. The addition of salt and lime makes possible its use in 
freezing weather, but at the risk of the salt whitening the bricks. 

Plumbing. 

In piping for plumbing, right angles must be avoided. Alain 
pipes should go perpendicularly to the cellar, then at draining angles 
to the sewer. As far as feasible, lateral pipes extending any distance 
should be ceiling hung in the cellar in plain view. Condensation 
on pipes in a large house is about a quart of water a day in summer, 
and any crossing the house in a horizontal direction are liable to drip 
and stain ceilings and furnishings. Pipes should be placed before 
floors are laid, and kept close to chimneys and away from exterior 
walls wherever possible. They can be concealed in wooden pockets 
in closets, kitchen, and back halls. Breaking plaster to reach them 
when out of order is thus rendered unnecessary. All fixtures should 
be provided with free outlets, otherwise annoying overflow may occur 
in basement fixtures. Galvanized iron pipes should be painted. Brass 
piping under laundry tubs is the most satisfactory aside from raising 
cupidity in the tramp. 

There should be extra faucets and sill-cocks on porches, as well 
as on the grounds, and at least one non-freezing outdoor sill-cock, 
beside a number of cleanouts in and outside the cellar, with accessible 
hand and manholes. 

Water pipes passing through or near outer walls should be 
wrapped in mineral wool or some suitable substitute, as protection 
against frost. Dripping from condensation is also thus checkmated. 

Shower Jog. 

In planning a bathroom, lay out a shower jog. A space about 
five feet square between two closets, one in bathroom, the other in 
adjoining bedroom or hall gives a perfect shower and needle bath 
alcove, the three sides and floor being tiled or cemented, and inex- 
pensively solves the knotty problem of installing a shower. 

When glass traps are a mechanical possibility, one can tell at 
a glance if air bubbles, downward suction, or evaporation have 
destroyed the vital though insignificant looking water seal that holds 
in leash, except under undue pressure, sewer gas, that most virulent 
poison, one danger from our modern conveniences. 

The latest toilet fixtures are nearly noiseless and non-siphoning. 
A safeguard shut-off close to a toilet is a wise precaution. 

Four inch soil pipe in the ordinary house flushes more easily 
than five inch, narrowing to a swifter current, and makes a better 



HEATING 323 

job. If properly back-aired tour inch soil pipes with fresh air inlet 
at ground surface extend from cesspool pipe connection well above 
ridge tree, avoiding all window openings; thej are satisfactory venti- 
lators. Better uptake draft is secured by placing them next to the 
hot water pipes. Stacks must he perpendicular. 

Banish the set basin in or near sleeping rooms. Inlet water 
pipes of one and a half inches allow ample supply for one line fix- 
tures, even when all are used at the same time, and two inch outlets 
add but little expense and decrease liability to Stoppage. 

An air chamber at the end of the highest pipe line, or even in 
the cellar, to cushion the hack-kick of quickly shut-oft water pre- 
vents many an annoying leak, and with high water pressure is almost 
a necessity. 

Side wall instead of floor connection tor set basins makes the 
best job. 

Expensive re-nickeling of fixtures is saved by rubbing them 
bright, then covering with tried-out unsalted tallow when houses are 
closed. 

Plumbing spells common sense, and a. layman can easily master 
its seeming intricacies. 

Heating. 

If the system of heating is hot water, an open expansion tank 
is a complete safety valve, frozen and leaking pipes, especially in far 
away rooms or through neglect of careless servants, being the only 
possible objections, except extra expense of installation over that of 
steam, which if used should be the safe low-pressure system. Ham- 
mer noises are readily controlled by low pipe connection. Steam 
pipes placed close enough to wood and paper to char them favor con- 
ditions that, fed with sufficient oxygen, may result in spontaneous 
combustion, in spite of the contrary opinion held by many, and is 
not worth the risk. 

If one is using a hot air heating plant or indirect radiation, heat 
can he economized in windj weather by feeding air to the furnace 
through a register near the front door sill. This furnishes semi- 
heated air, and is of course in addition to the regular cold air box, 
which, to give best results, should face at least three points of the 
compass. Ir rook two fires to convince me that cold air boxes should 
be metal rather than wood. 

Over heating a hot air furnace is prevented by permanentlj 
fastening one register open, preferably in the hall. Carelessly con- 
nected pipes at the furnace mean danger of breathing sulphurous 
oxide or monoxide gas, even five per cent, of carbon dioxide, the 
choke or black damp of the mine, endangering health, if not life. 

Heating economj calls for boiler and fire box larger than the 
cubic feet of the area to be heated figure. To cover all require- 
ments, there are boilers that admit of additional sections being added. 



324 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Wrought iron boilers lose their efficiency through formation of scale, 
especially if the cellar is damp — an entirely unnecessary evil. Cast 
iron boilers are better in this respect, but we are losers in both health 
and money when we allow dampness, that insidious foe, to get the 
upper hand. 

If windows exceed one-eighth of the wall area, the heating plant 
must be proportionately larger. Lack of care in setting window and 
door frames, a very common error, increases heating expense. 

Trim. 

Trim covers a wide latitude. Narrow trim is often more effec- 
tive than wide and thin. One extreme is a thick trim, scarcely wider 
than a narrow picture frame. A very satisfactory door and window 
trim is an ogee curve mitred at corners. Care must be taken that 
this form of molding should be exceptionally well kiln dried, as 
joints will more readily show and require greater skill in mitreing. 
Plain work is preferable as a rule to elaborate beading, which is 
another dust gatherer. 

Fumed and chemically eaten wood are both suitable for a den. 

In boudoir or drawing room the intarsiatura work of the Fif- 
teenth Century in door casing and window head or a combination of 
jig-saw and hand chisel work is satisfactory, and can be made to 
closely imitate carving. Plain trim is preferable for servants' quar- 
ters, kitchen, and laundry. 

In main rooms without wainscot, baseboards eighteen inches 
high add in appearance more than the difference in cost, and give 
the ample base plug space which good work demands. Where style 
of room allows, the Colonial dental may edge beam and cornice, but 
the square set corner block formerly used to cover joints should be 
omitted and trim mitred in one of the several methods now in use. 

We found that the carpenters, especially in cabinet work, set- 
ting up trim and building in stairs, made better mitres and closer- 
knit joints during the clear atmosphere of fall and winter than in 
damp spring or muggy, moisture-laden dog-days. 

The temptation to apply to indoor uses material appropriate only 
for exteriors, as exampled in a shingled interior wall and mantel 
hood, rough bouldered stone partition, or a wooden latticed wall in 
a billiard room, should be conquered. Beside being in questionable 
taste, they are dust collectors of the rankest kind. 

Closets and bays make good safety valves for ugly square box- 
like rooms, and the former are excellent noise barriers. If rooms are 
connected, doors each side of and flush with separating partition solve 
the noise difficulty. 

A second story windowed trunk closet sometimes saves steps and 
dented stair and hall. 



TRIM 325 

Verduro-erowned Lintel. 

One of the most pleasing ornaments for an entrance was made 
by leaving an exterior opening two feet high in the house wall over 
the door lintel the entire width of the doorway, forming a unique 
fronton by glassing it without and within, in reality a zinc-lined giant 
wardian case. Planted with ferns and red-berried plants, it rarely 
required watering. In cold weather the inner hinged glass was raised. 

One dining room had a rectangular shaped skylight so locate:! 
as to be mainly in the shade. In the oak paneled and walled sides 
reaching nearly to ceiling line were windows set five feet from the 
floor. At one end of the room was a tall hooded mantel, at the other 
a picture windowed bay, and lights and shadows were thus evenly 
balanced. 

Beamed Ceilings. 

Beamed ceilings are preferably composed of large beams which 
are also less costly to build. Beaming where side walls join the ceil- 
ing can often be dispensed with and a cove made in the plaster. Two 
big cross beams set well apart give sturdy strength and beauty 
unknown in a cut up and costly paneled ceiling, while cambered beams 
in a high studded studio or billiard room often transform it into an 
imposing hall. 

Plaster ribbed, decorated beams, though expensive, give an air 
of elegance. They may also be made two or even three feet wide 
and edged with wood. 

Another good overhead treatment can be obtained with beams 
paralleling the four sides and placed a couple of feet from the side 
wall which is also beamed where wall and ceiling join. From these 
short beams spaced in proportion, the long ones are tied together, 
leaving a blank space in ceiling centre for decoration. 

A wooden ceiling, if not of stereotyped T. & G. beaded stuff, is 
a desirable finish and eliminates all risk of falling plaster. 

Stairs. 

The stair-builder at times harks back to the tortuous winding 
stair of the early Gothic, coeval with the unpretentious stair of early 
France and Germany, surpassed even in that day by the beauty of the 
broad, severe lined and dignified marble staircase of Italy. 

The staircase hall often makes or mars the house, and the prob- 
lem of stair building is intricate. 

A featured hall or stair, or both; the entrance room square or 
rectangular, with side or inner stair alcove partially concealed ; the 
comparatively narrow staircase or a broad steamer or platformed 
affair eating well into the hall area, are work-outs worthy the best 
planning. 



326 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

To dissect still more closely, stairs need not link the entrance 
door with the bathroom, and the thoroughfare to the front door 
should not be through living rooms. The architect's conception must 
tie conveniently together hall, door, window, stair, and fireplace. 

To get the proper height for a stair step, the width of step 
plus height should equal the ordinary walking stride. Seven inches 
is good riser height. An abnormal increase of step width is awkward 
and uncomfortable and any pronounced infringement of the above 
rule makes an undesirable stair. Too wide a step is as inconvenient 
as too high a tread and should not be used, unless a short, wide flight 
is needed to give an imposing entrance to hall or salon. Seven by 
nine, totaling sixty-three inches, is good stair mathematics. The 
close string staircase admits of more substantial and richer treatment 
than the common cut-string stair so universally used in cottage and 
bungalow. 

The baluster Colonial, the carved Jacobean, the ogived Gothic, 
as well as marble step and metal balustrade, to the manor born 
and appropriately used, add their quota to stairway motifs. 

The rail, whether with Colonial ramp or heavily carved, should 
be three feet six inches high to protect alike childhood and age. The 
side view of a staircase is generally the most interesting. In several 
houses curlicues ornamented the outside of each step, and one low 
staircase wainscot was heightened by a line of uniformly framed 
pictures. 

An awkward second story hall is obviated by a bayed and 
settled window nook, a divaned book alcove leading to a balcony, 
a second story conservatory, or a prosy but essential sewing corner — ■ 
in fact, a bit of foresight will often change an ugly landing or an 
angular entry into a useful and beautiful hall. Ugly falh are pre- 
vented by mid-stair platforms, absence of winders, and ample head 
room. 

That half a loaf is better than none applies aptly to the half- 
back service stair, though a house of any pretensions should have noth- 
ing giving less seclusion than a full flight of back stairs, at least to 
the second story. 

Painting. 

Paint is not always a wood protector. Green wood hermetically 
sealed with paint sponsors dry rot. Old, unpainted houses prove that 
air is the great preservative. Oxygen in the lungs of men or in the 
depths of matter lengthens life, while confined moisture is a destroyer. 
Any paint that does not contain sufficient pure oil to withstand a fair 
amount of soap and water scrubbing is not worth the labor of putting 
on. 

Color matching, whether paint or stain, as seen in roof and side 
wall or in the interior on ceiling, wall, trim, doors, window frames, 
stairs and floors, is important. Rarely is a large house built but, 
through carelessness of owner, architect, or painter, the wrong stain 



KNOW YOUR HOUSE THOUGH UNBUILT 327 

or paint is used on new wood to the annoyance of all concerned, and 
the damage once done is never completely remedied. 

Save where hygiene calls for white enamel paint in kitchen and 
laundry, or prevailing style arrogantly dictates its use in bedroom or 
gala room, woodwork may be treated with non-odorous stain and 
pumice stone, a finish that neither soils nor perishes under dust, fric- 
tion, or blow. 

Real instead of imitation should he the endeavor, whether in 
plain chestnut or Georgia pine nature graining, hut never the spurious 
quartered oak produced with hand, brush and cloth. 

Blinds. 

Seeminglj a simple matter, hut neither ordinary nor extraordi- 
nary blinds harmonize with picturesque oriel casements, broad and 
lofty grouped embrasured English windows, and mullioned triplets. 
The list from which to choose includes the Colonial crescent-peep-eye 
shutter, the somewhat insecure pent-roof-blind either full length or 
with hinged centre joint, the roll-up-in-pocket top or bottom blind, 
the aggressive ami unconcealed sliding blind, the full-slatted whole, 
half, or cut-in-centre blind, the regular stock blind with moving 
or stationary slats, and that final anchorage, Venetian blinds. Interior 
pockets for solid paneled or slat shutters give character to any 
dwelling. 

It is a disjointed selection, both within and without, but the 
Venetian blind may prove a mainstay, though given to wind sway- 
ing propensities. 

New and better ways of doing things are not necessarily more 
expensive ; in fact they often make for economy. For instance, it costs 
but little more to put a sanitary base in the kitchen and laundry, and 
it is absolutely vermin-proof and a complete phaser to rat or squirrel. 
Artistic triplicate windows cost less to make, set, and trim than do 
separate windows. Hays at the time of building, arc inexpensive, and 
often a fifty per cent, improvement. A well lighted stairway is an 
essential, and a curving line, often a paying luxury. 

Red birch that some builders cannot distinguish from mahogany 
when finished, costs no more than many common woods. 

A plaster wall is but little more expensive than wood filled, 
shellacked, anil re-treated every few years, and is far superior save 
when wood paneling or wainscoting is placed over plaster. 

In building for sale, selling points are often more in evidence 
than essential fundamentals, and get-it-in-at-all-hazard features fre- 
quently mar a unique design. 

How to Know Your House Though Unbuilt. 

As a preliminary, batten-board the site, then, before breaking 
ground, line off first and second stories on the greensward. White 
and colored whitewash will differentiate each room. Without spend- 



328 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

ing a dollar, the exact bearing a part has to the whole and all view 
points within and without can be thoroughly grasped. 

By the following plan, an amateur can tell in still closer detail, 
providing he gives the necessary time to studying results, just how the 
new house will work out, even to the smallest item, before the cellar 
has been dug. This is something that neither architect nor builder, 
with a lifetime of experience, ever really knows in its entirety before 
completion ; much less can he explain it to another if the house is 
elaborate. 

As the builder of an ocean liner turns out from his model room 
a miniature vessel before its keel is laid, so let the housebuilder lay 
out his home. 

The one hundred or more dollars it might cost would be off- 
set by the prevention of even one glaring error. A cabinet maker 
or journeyman can readily be found who will work overtime if 
necessary, modeling from plans of the architect a complete archetype 
of a miniature house in plaster or wood, preferably the latter, on 
account of durability and light weight, or the entire house can first 
be worked out in cardboard. An l /% scale conveys the best idea of 
proportion. 

It might be built in sections, so that each detail can be closely 
scrutinized or may only be skeletonized to attain a fairly satisfactory 
result. It could be set on library table and taken to pieces and put 
together again as readily as one dissects a wooden puzzle. In this 
way details of general construction, number, size and location of 
rooms, position and number of doors and windows; relative height 
of ceilings, vistas both in and out of doors — even the most convenient 
side to hang a door, a minor, but often important detail, — can be 
settled, and the front door in design and coloring is well worth exact 
duplication. (The entrance door of feudal England was a narrow 
one-at-a-time door, contrasting sharply with our wide doors of the 
present day, every line of which should express hospitality. Prior 
to the Sixteenth Century a paneled door was unknown. The earliest 
were pivoted at the centre.) Even the number and style of stairways 
can all be studied and re-studied, and when this miniature house has 
served its mission it can be riveted together and handed down as a toy 
house to gladden the hearts of children of more than one generation, 
and photographs of a completed property shown before the lifting of 
a pick-axe. 

How to Partition a House in One Day. 

Closely allied to the above plan, and of so little cost that it 
should be tried, even in the least expensive dwelling, is the follow- 
ing method that I have used to get acquainted with the nooks and 
corners of a house before it is much more than framed and enclosed, 
therefore in ample time to make any changes desired, and make 
them in the most economical- manner. After the house has been 



PARTITIONING A HOUSE IN ONE DAY 329 

raised, roofed, sided and roughly floored, and the main carrying 
partitions placed, procure a quantity of plasterers' grounds — say 7/$ x 
J4 stuff — that will readily bend. These long, straight, slender 
wooden sticks some sixteen or eighteen feet in length are flexible 
and so light in weight that half a dozen can easily be clasped in the 
hand, and set up, lined and spaced two or three feet apart and lightly 
tacked at floor and ceiling line. In this way can be shown experi- 
mentally changes of all kinds, and how they would affect the arrange- 
ment of furniture, radiators, or electric fixtures, settle the location 
of a possible closet, an extra semi-partition carried to the frieze line 
of an inglenook, or outline the radical shifting of side walls in some 
room showing squared ugliness when it should be nooked or cosy- 
cornered. These slender pieces of wood can be bent to outline arches, 
place balconies, curve overhead openings, mark out a flying arch 
under stair soffit, segment the ceiling of a dining room or barrel that 
of a long hall and bathroom, groin a vaulted roof, locate columns, 
pilasters, and spandrels, steal an extra bathroom from some barn- 
like room, or arrange alcoves or ambrys at either end ; line a stair- 
window-seat on a landing, widen a stair opening, lower a ceiling — 
even change and rearrange the layout of an entire floor, and prove 
beyond peradventure whether the billiard room is not a trifle too 
narrow, a common error. If a partition is to be moved, it can be 
tried out in this simple way, to least interfere with door or window. 
This method will boudoir a bedroom, corner-cove or ceiling-cove a 
drawing room (or, as it was originally called, a withdrawing room), 
change an opening or an entrance, show different effects and settle 
one's preference for a round or square column, a square headed 
opening or a Roman, Tudor, or Gothic arch, for there is nothing 
so convincing as ocular demonstration. It will locate to an inch the 
ceiling beams in connection with window and door openings — some- 
times a difficult proposition, though it looks simple enough to the 
novice. Faulty construction is always an annoyance if realized, and 
if once known will be realized for life. By the use of these sticks it 
may be prevented and features kept in proper balance. In like 
manner each mantel in the house can be laid out, deciding whether 
it shall be high, low, or hooded ; with square or rounded edges, built 
half way or to the ceiling or cabinet-lockered. Proper height and 
width of plate shelf, whether best lined with door and window trim 
or above or below it, and other numberless details can be more easily 
settled in this way, and sticks left in place as long as necessary to 
arrive at final conclusions. The house that in the morning had but 
a roof, four sides and a few carrying partitions, by night can be ready 
for inspection, so far as division of rooms and general effect are con- 
cerned. 

These same slender strips of wood also aid in the inexpensive 
laying out of extra verandas, bays, and projections, avoiding encroach- 



330 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY- PLACE 

ments on some interesting view, and transforming jarring effects to 
those of harmony. 

The last word in building is never spoken — new methods of 
construction are frequently advocated by the experimentally inclined 
architect and builder and sometimes prove aggravating failures — com- 
mon sense makes the best guiding rudder. 

Building Fundamentals. 

The "do it," and "don't do it," in building are lesion, but a few 
fundamentals should be rightly settled : — Do not build too close to 
the highway or at a lower level ; the only excuse for the latter is 
to obtain the sunken garden, bird's-eye view effect across the 
lawn from the highway, in which case the land should slope away 
from the rear of a house, and if abruntly all the better. 

A trolley and automobile traveled turnpike are desirable for 
the rear entrance to an estate, but freedom from noise, dust and com- 
mercialism decrees that one should never front it, unless the house is 
placed well /nick from the roadway. A dusty highway seriously 
retards the growth of vegetable and flower, but parlor floor roadways 
banish the dust nuisance. 

Just right, in mixture, mode of application and use of cement 
and reinforced corcrete in house building is the key note to prevent 
its crumbling, cracking and breaking. Discoloration and absorption 
of moisture by cement are difficult problems to solve. The drying 
out of a house through heat and non-damp breezes is a necessity, 
requiring months to do it thoroughly and the reprehensible habit 
of covering walls and ceilings with any substance before this is 
accomplished prolongs the drying out process for a long period and 
foundations many an ill. 

If your roof is inartisfcally high, drag it down with a wide 
overhang and suitable color treatment and insist, in spite of some 
architect's bias for an unbroken roof contour, on enough dormer 
and gable windows to thoroughly light that third story, even if you 
don't finish its interior aside from the necessary bracing and simport- 
ing rough partitions. 

The time will surely come when that third floor will make all 
the difference between comfort and discomfort, and possibly the 
selling of the property — an hour which conic; to all property — at a 
substantial profit or a disastrous loss. If von build servants' rooms 
on the second story, locate partitions, windows, and doors in such a 
manner that they will make suitable guest rooms when you or your 
successors (in later years) move the servants higher up. and frame 
the timbering so that if necessarv certain partitions can be removed 
and stud in the rough for future doorways. Also carry main plumbing 
and heating pipes to the third storv, capping outlets. 

Roof and foundation are big factors in the cost of exterior con- 
struction. Build the roof to avoid an undue number of valleys and 



FIRE! FIRE J 331 

angles as well as carelesslj constructed balconies that mean stained 
ceilings and falling plaster. 

It your limine is on a side hill, it's just the house for a generous 
billiard room in the basement, where an immovable cement founda- 
tion makes possible a permanently spirit-leveled billiard table. Here 
you can also build a huge stone fireplace, and install a lavatory with 
shower tor the golf and tennis devotee, but fight dampness and ground 
air strenuously. 

Don't forget to heavily tar and also ditch-drain the outside 
walls where they are buried in the earth, and after the usual cement 
floor is laid and well dried out, fur up the floor to have at least 
that inch air space between the cement and the wooden Moor. A 
copious coating of tar prevents its use as an insect lair. Mooring if 
laid on scantlings directly over stone, gravel, or earth, even if air- 
spaced will swell and tear asunder. Failure to thus checkmate all 
warring forces will transform your attractive billiard room into a 
first class rheumatism breeder, if not an assassin. 

FIRE! FIRE! 

Five times in twenty-five years in Hillcrest Manor, that weird, 
uncanny cry which in an instant transforms some types of humanity 
into frenzied beasts, trampling their fellow mortals under foot in the 
mad effort to escape an agonizing death, echoed back from the hollow 
square of our farm buildings and across hillside and meadow. Thrice 
the fire was smothered before the leaping flames had risen breast 
high, but twice the fire king was victorious. Gables, with its dozen 
hanging balconies and verdure-canopied verandas, in two hours was 
a smouldering heap of ashes, the occupants barely escaping with 
their lives. Again, the highest tiled tower of Buena Vista was 
struck by lightning but the heavy downpour quenched the flames. ^ et 
again, the stock buildings, carriage sheds, silo, hennery, The Cot 
and, woe betide us, Wayside itself, stored to the roof-tree with house- 
hold gods and heirlooms, some of which antedated Colonial days, 
vanished in smoke. The cause (a frequent one), the careless handling 
of a brushwood fire. 

Across the valley we saw beauteous Alta Crest, transformed 
into a human pyre, pay its blood curdling tribute to this same relent- 
less conqueror, and many times on summer evenings from the vantage 
ground of Hillcrest the darkness of night was brightened by sheets 
of flame devouring hay-barn, stack, or farm house, on some distant 
hill or in near by valley. Fire! Fire! Fire! Expensive object 
lessons these and if we had it all to do over again, we would plan 
along lines that better aid in fire control. 

A fire line stack with connecting hose should be installed on 
every floor in each building, and piped to the pressure tank or reser- 
voir, chemical fire extinguishers on the wall wherever needed and an 
extra supply stored in some get-at-able closet where also should hang 



332 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

blankets which, when saturated with water, make rare life savers 
and kerosene fire-quenchers, supplemented with a few buckets filled 
with sand. Fire axes, fire hooks, crowbars and wire rope ladders 
should be fastened against the walls and placed on upper balconies. 
Ladders of different lengths, one long enough to reach the roof at 
gable end, should hang from hooks under the sheltering veranda floor 
and be kept for this one purpose. In carpenter shop and horse 
barns, especially should be installed the overhead automatic sprinkler, 
also a perforated water connected galvanized and painted pipe the 
ridge length of all buildings. A thorough roof-drenching will fre- 
quently give fire protection. 

First Aids to the Fire-Fighter. 

First aid instructions to the amateur fire fighter are essential ; 
plain simple directions as to location of apparatus, what to do and 
what not to do, tacked up where he who runs may read — a sort of 
fire catechism and it wouldn't be a half bad idea to have an occasional 
fire drill and test out those stand pipes, gain speed in ladder raising, 
inspect fire extinguishers, etc., etc. 

This first aid list of things requiring prompt action should include 
closing of windows and doors, especially those of stairways, shutting off 
all draughts the moment a fire is discovered. A full pail of water is 
difficult to handle, and only through practice can one get the free 
circular and effective sweep throw. A water-saturated broom will 
do great execution. If it is a curtain or bed on fire, get it on the 
floor where no under draft can fan the flames. If it's soot in a chim- 
ney, a couple of pounds of salt thrown down the flue forms gases 
which explode, detach the soot, and keep the flames from entering 
any crevices between the bricks, and water dashed on the hearth will 
finish the job. Animal and vegetable oils are often responsible for 
spontaneous combustion and it goes without saying that dirt and 
rubbish, especially about stairways and in cellars, are fire inducers. 
This scheme of fire fighting would include say, a half dozen adja- 
cent neighbors and a large signal gong high under the eaves, while 
an extra number of chemical tanks on wheels to rally round the 
flames would greatly decrease fire hazard and under some conditions 
lessen insurance premiums. 

Mottoes. 

Mottoes pivot and concentrate thought and help to individualize 
estate, house, and room. From the following gleaned through a 
score of years were selected several to arch fireplace, and centre hall, 
library, festive-board-room and boudoir. 

"Abide now at home." 

"A good book is the precious life blood of a master mind." 

"A hundred thousand welcomes." 

"A poor thing, but mine own." 



MOTTOES Mi 

"A storehouse medicine of the mind." 
"Au dieu foy aux amis foyer." 
"Au\ Livres je dois tout." 
"Bene facere et discere vera." 
"Bepred Diger." 

"Blessings on him who invented ship." 
''Hon feu a mal hiver." 
"Books are my brave utensils." 
"Books that are books." 

"Come blessed barriers betwixt day and day 
"Come hither, come hither; 

Here shall ye see no enemy 

But winter and rough weather." 
"Come sleep, () sleep, the certain knot of peace." 

Dear mother of fresh joyous health." 
"Drive away the cold, heaping logs on the hearth." 
"Fast, west, hame's best." 
"En servant les autres je me consume." 
"Fait ce que voudrais." 

"First think out your work, then work out your thought." 
"Goodness, discipline and knowledge, teach ye me." 
"Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be." 
"He that hath a house to put his head in hath a good headpiece." 
"Heaven trim our lamps while we sleep." 

"Hearth whose good cheer warms and comforts chilled and wor- 
ried humanity." 

"Hie habitat felicitas." 

"His table dormant in his halle alway stood ready, covered all 

the longe day." 

"Home of the homeless, friend of the friendless." 

"Ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge the wing whereby 

we fly to heaven." 

"In portu quies." 

"In this my house I live at ease and here I do whate'er I please." 

"It is always morning somewhere in the world." 

"Lay up seasoned wood while you may." 

"Le faire ou bien dire." 

"Let good digestion wait on appetite and health on both." 

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment." 

"Let not one babbling dream affright our souls." 

"Let them want nothing that my house affords." 

"Music when soft voices die vibrates in the memory." 

".My house, how little you may be, may you always be mine." 

"My library was dukedom large enough." 



334 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

"Non dormit qui custodit." 

"Paix et peu." 

"Pauca sed mea." 

"Piccola si ma studiosa." 

"Qui legit regit." 

"Qui uti scitei bona." 

"Quieti et musis." 

"Scripta manet." 

"Sibi et amicis." 

"Sings the blackened log a tune learned in some forgotten June." 

"Sleep dwell upon thine eyes." 

"Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care." 

"Sleep that shuts up sorrow's eye." 

"Sleep, that which makes the shepherd equal to the king, and 
the simple to the wise." 

"Soft touches of the night become the touches of sweet harmony." 
"Some hae meat and canna eat 
And some wad eat that want it ; 
We hae meat and we can eat, 
And sae the Lord be thankit." 

"Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, a chamber deaf 
to noise, and blind to light." 

"The last of life for which the first was made." 

"The man that hath no music in himself, and is not moved by 
concerts of sweet sounds is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils." 

"The mantle that covers all human thought." 

"The ornaments of a house are the friends who visit it." 

"Through this wide open gate none come too early, none too 
late." 

"Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, and seal the hushed 
casket of the soul." 

"Usted esta en su casa." 

"Venitas." 

"Warm ye in friendship." 

"When friends meet hearts warm." 

"When the world is cold to you, go build fires to warm it." . . 

"Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays, and twenty caged 
nightingales do sing." 

"Your presence makes us rich." 

"Youth is but thought and think I will, 
Youth and I are housemates still." 

Gates and Barriers. 

Barriers as seen, gates and fences in outlines, material and 
manner of construction are, like chimneys, seemingly limitless. If 
the old exist where the new should abide, it is the owner's bounden 
duty to change them ; for they must harmonize with the new house. 



GATES AND BARRIERS 335 

A whiz-view from a car window gives a slight idea of the possible 
variety, as one can casih schedule one hundred or more different 
styles in a day, from the upturned stump, riven criss-cross rail and 
rough bouldered wall of the pioneer to the productions of famous 
architects. 

Hedge> range from the shrub and tree deciduous as seen in 
privet and copper beech to evergreens, from arbor vita* to Norway 
spruce and hemlock, and there is a complete alphabet of form and 
color in shrub, tree, stone, brick, tile, bronze, wire, cast and wrought 
iron, and cement with various combinations thereof, as well as turf 
and shrub-topped walls, their crevices filled with plants, and the 
whole backed by luxurious vernal growth. The finicky cobble stone 
and big boulder, the rarely beautiful yet inexpensive rough, open- 
jointed broken ashler, with plants growing in and over it and vines 
climbing along its sides and scrambling atop — even a line of half 
buried single stones — all make good boundaries. A wall containing 
many small stones can he lined off (with or without lamp black) to 
give a solid front by the use of a liberal quantity of cement. Building 
barriers more than head high, so that the passer-by sees but a black 
streak of hard and dusty road imprisoned between high walls, is a 
>eltish attempt to shut off the uplifting view of an earthly paradise. 
In the parking of narrow village lots one realizes the true democracy 
of country living, "all for each and each for all," as seen in views 
'cross lawns and gardens for a half dozen blocks or more, under 
some conditions necessarily restricted, yet but slightly marred by 
vine-draped wire fences. 

Huge privet posts squared and trimmed as true as blocks of 
granite or sheared into pointed or globe-topped pedestals, for eight 
months are living masses of green. 

Harriers are well worth best thought, also the gates that pierce 
them, whether but an iron chain, riveted and hooked into single 
rough boulders, a lofty bronze grilled, lantern-centred gateway, one 
of the most effective forms of entrance, or a stone arch beneath the 
conning tower of a Norman castle. None of the belongings of a 
dwelling more forcibly herald to would-be despoilers or trespassers 
ownership and possession than gates anil barriers. 



336 



HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



IBS! TLOOH #JJWI 



SECOUD TtOSB H.M1 




PLANS WHICH GAVE MOST FOR THE MONEY. 



INDEPENDENCE WITHIN TEN YEARS 337 



CHAPTER X. 

How to Become a Householder With Twenty Tenants in 

Your Employ, Starting With a Capital of 

Two Thousand Dollars. 

NEW YORK CITY is to-day surrounded by a community of 
rich and independent farmers, close questioning of whom 
will develop the fact that the onion patch and the corn and potato 
field did not produce all their riches, unless exceptionally located as 
to the best markets and under most favorable labor conditions. 

Improved railroad facilities and trolleys bring the business 
man and the city clerk to the farmer, and are sometimes his main 
source of wealth. In other words, take heed to the object lesson 
taught by the farmer, let a man keep his clerkship in town and at 
the same time buy a farm, never a village lot that, aside from the 
faint prospect of business inroads, will be worth no more in ten 
years than it is the day of the purchase, and generally less. Let 
him see to it that his acres front some roadway that within five 
years will be traversed by trolleys. In from five to ten years at least 
twenty tenants will be living on his land and their mortgages will 
be in his safety box, while he will be motoring or cruising, with just 
enough work in the laying out of his property to avoid ennui and 
the constant leisure so detrimental to the average man. 

My experience is that of many another who has taken the 
trouble to investigate. The scope of operations, thanks to automobile 
and trolley, is being so extended that there are many opportunities 
for large profit to-day for those of very moderate means. For 
example, I know of a section within an hour of New York, where in 
a dozen years property has advanced not in one, but hundreds of 
instances over one thousand per cent., without expenditure on the 
part of the purchaser except an interest charge of five per cent, per 
annum and taxes. Even such unusual conditions as I herein describe 
have a bearing on my general statement. 

Two extreme instances yet absolutely correct as to increase in 
value may be given from a score that I could name: 

Less than twenty-five years ago a property within thirty-five 
miles of New York City was offered me for thirty-four thousand 
dollars that is to-day w r orth and would easily bring half a million 
dollars, and that without a dollar of improvement. Another property 
purchased at that time for less than a thousand dollars is now con- 
servatively estimated at twenty thousand, property on which a sav- 
ings banks would readily loan ten thousand dollars at five per cent. 



338 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

Opportunities still exist for those who search, though rarely with 
such large profits. Let one devote the necessary time at odd hours 
to thoroughly scouring the out-lying country, map in hand, assuming 
it to be near some thriving centre such as New York City. When 
what appears a suitable site has been found, question closely several 
disinterested "natives," who are usually authorities on local matters, 
though absolutely purblind, as a rule, to speculative values. If 
financial help is required, one or two friends can be let in "on the 
ground floor." 

Selecting the Site. 

In determining on a site, there are a few "must bes" which 
schedule somewhat as follows: High land, extended views — long 
road frontage is a great advantage and fertile soil is desirable but not 
an absolute essential — trees, as little swamp as possible, and good 
water. With trolley possibilities within five years, no near nuisance 
nor prospect of any, such as sanatoriums, poor farms, slaughter houses 
and objectionable factories, and with property, say not over one and 
one-half hours, preferably one hour from the city, and not over two 
or three miles from railroad station, the success of the project is 
assured. If, in addition, there are a deep ravine, a fine stream, with 
water power possibilities, fruit trees, good roads, desirable neighbors 
and it is within a mile of a station, assets will bear marking up. 

In selecting as well as planting land, remember that the light 
sandy soil on your farm suits crops that mature early, before droueht 
days begin and that heavy soil is for crops that require the entire 
summer to mature. 

The fact that all of your future customers may not keep devil 
wagons and that plodding dobbin and shanks' mare will surely 
lengthen the distance, should have a bearing on your selection of a 
farm for country homes; at the same time beware of the nearness of 
a railroad track with its accompanying smirching smoke, screech and 
jangle, and other bedlam noises, intensified when moisture-laden south 
and east winds blow toward your Mecca. Your idyl must be a real 
idyl, antipodal to the man-made town. 

Even if inspection of the proposed purchase reveals a rotting 
sill, a leaking roof, and decaying window frames, remember you are 
buying hut a makeshift house. It is building sites that you want. 
If land, location, and possibilities arc satisfactory, brace up the sills, 
as well as your courage, and with great care slip bits of tin under the 
shingles that leak, (even walking on an old roof loosens enough 
shingles to necessitate a new one), and let the rest go until you 
can build the new house. Spend what is essential in purifying the 
cellar, removing old wall papers and sterilizing walls, floors, and 
surroundings in general ; clean up all refuse, calk all crevices, and 
put the rest of your spare change and energy into the building of a few 
absolutely necessary roads and extensive plantings. 



LANDSCAPE GARDENING 339 

Rapidly increasing values in effect actually decrease your mort- 
gage without your paying a dollar toward it. and if the land has 
heen well selected, judicious sales will enable you to pay off the entire 
indebtedness and still leave the major part of the property free and 
clear. 

The summer kitchen that will yield summer comfort and the 
woodshed or old English "outshot" beyond, 'gainst which the 
"norther" fruitlessly heats, are both desirable features if in your 
Eldorado find, hut neither are essential. 

Avoid farming; at first, except in a small way for family use. 
Wait! Make the old house do, with a few must-haves. Keep a cow; a 
horse to plough and cultivate, and chickens. That cheap automo- 
bile picked up second-hand, hut carefully selected, will answer as 
means of locomotion, and give family and friends an occasional out- 
ing. Set out immediately an asparagus bed for home use at least, 
and if for market, all the better, and a shrub and tree nursery. Buy 
as many hardy, ornamental, small plants by the thousand as you 
can afford ; they can be had for a few cents each in Europe and at 
times in this country, including evergreens, rhododendrons, etc., and 
start that hole-in-the-ground greenhouse for early stuff and shrub pro- 
pagation. Eill out with the surplus stock of some nurseryman that you 
can get at a bargain out of season, you to move it if conveniently near. 
Put on an extra man occasionally to push cultivation and care for 
the nursery stock. Set out some fruit of the right sort — grapes cost 
little and yield enormously, but plant only the non-mildewers and 
sure ripeners. 

Landscape Gardening. 

Employ a landscape gardener to lay out your farm on paper, 
showing roads, building sites, and the general planting scheme. If 
you know in some ways more than he does, at least buy his advice, 
but settle the price ahead of the buying, then do as you please, keep- 
ing the horse and extra man busy in cutting and filling grades, mov- 
ing this tree or that shrub, thinning out where needed — in a word, 
shaping up your farm roughly with choice building sites, so planted 
with fruit and ornamental trees as to avoid shutting off prospective 
roads and views or interfering with lawns or vegetable garden. There 
is no better aid to longevity than this kind of life. 

No man ever voiced a greater truth than Abraham Lincoln 
when he : aid the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving 
a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. 

Aim to have in five years fifteen or twenty building sites of two 
or three acres each, with main landscaping finished. Meantime, you 
can harvest hay and possibly sow and gather some essential crops, 
and, by protecting the trees, use some of the land for pasturage, 
throttling expense in large measure with horse boarders. Prospective 



340 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

customers like action and you may discount the five years' wait quite 
a bit. 

Let me emphasize again that the site of a house makes or ruins 
it, and it is imperative to settle the different sites first. 

It takes time to grow trees and shrubs, and he who has set out 
the right kinds and has them properly located will surely find appre- 
ciative customers. 

Asparagus Profits. 

In addition to ornamental shrubs, trees, and fruit, I planted an 
asparagus bed on each site of a tract I thus laid out. The farm 
asparagus bed of two or three acres will pay for many an improve- 
ment. The ordinary farmer dodges the three years' wait, therefore 
he who plants it has less local competition. We never bunched our 
asparagus, but cut it in haphazard lengths and sent it to the local 
market. This was our trademark of freshness, and the yearly income 
from a three-acre bed was over one thousand dollars. Its require- 
ments were inexpensive, a mulch of manure, cultivation, and once a 
year a little salt. Manure and salt also worked wonders in the radish 
bed. 

Farming the City. 

With farm carefully selected, the battle for independence is half 
won. Sun and rain, with but little cash outlay, and that along the 
lines mentioned, will do the rest. But in those five years of waiting 
the head of the family should farm the city, and strict economy must 
be practiced. 

This is a practical plan for living a helpful and healthv countrv 
life. 

With a cash capital of two thousand dollars with which to 
begin, and an income of from $1,500 to $3,000 a year, let us see how 
those figures that "cannot lie" line up. 

Absolute Independence on Small Capital. 

From twenty-five to fifty acres of such land as I have described 
can be found by painstaking search for five thousand dollars. The 
temptation to buy extensive acreage would increase distance and the 
additional expense hamper development, and possibly wreck the 
enterprise. Neighboring banks will loan $2,500 on a fifty per cent, 
valuation, as per the law of limitations, at five per cent., the usual 
bank rate. The seller can often be persuaded to take back a second 
mortgage of say $1,500 at six per cent, for three years, which can 
be re-sold at a small discount, or the purchaser can with persistent 
effort find an investor, or some friend might share the profit. A 
second mortgage where improvements are to be made can always be 
negotiated. This, with the $1,000 cash paid to the seller gives owner- 
ship. The first mortgage will stand indefinitely as long as the $125 



A TEST ON THE BEACH 341 

interest and taxes are promptly met, and the second may remain for 
two or three years as long as the $ ( M) interest is met. This assures 
one a good home at the moderate rental of $215 per year, plus taxes 
and insurance, which are usually moderate, and the $50 interest on 
the $1,000 investment. Add to this $1,000 to cover stock and extras 
— the $1,000 outlay should bring large returns — thus investing the 
full $2,000 and increasing the interest charge $60 per year. 

Values advance when a city family moves into a locality and 
improvements are begun, therefore with little effort one could 
dispose of part of his holdings the first year — say enough to halve 
carrying charges, still keeping a speculative quantity of land. The 
commutation, which must be added to the yearly rent, will bring the 
amount to $450, plus the chargeable items for repairs and improve- 
ments which should be kept as low as possible. 

As covering in part the above, one can figure the fresh vege- 
tables, milk, and eggs' consumed and sold which would certainly pay 
for the man of all work, and with good planning cut down the $450 
quite a bit. 

A City and a Country Home Totalling for Rent $650 a Year. 

The second half of the plan is that, assuming the base of opera- 
tions close to New York, in late fall one can advertise for a furnished 
apartment in town. Many families go south and are glad to rent 
for as low as $50 per month or even less to careful people. Thus is 
provided a country house wherein to enjoy the spring, summer and 
autumn and in which to keep prized furniture, books, etc., that an 
habitual apartment house dweller would be obliged to relegate to the 
storehouse for half the year, paying thereon enough to materially aid in 
maintaining both a modest country home, and a winter home in town 
for not over $650 per year. A $3,000 income would admit of both ; 
a $1,500 but of one. 

A Tent on the Beach. 

A caretaker can always be found for the country home, and a 
tent on the beach for an occasional week-end outing makes the final 
link in vanquishing the ennui of existence and getting the most out 
of the usual prosaic routine of dressing, eating, and sleeping day after 
day, year after year. 

Acquaintance and a little effort will accomplish the selling end; 
— a club or business friend — a week end or a Sunday visit; a talk 
over luncheon or on the car. Give your friends a choice of sites, if 
need be, to get started on this real missionary work in the interest 
of /)///< air and healthy living. Once the ship is off the ways shq 
moves easily. Judicious newspaper advertising coupled with skill 
and patience produces excellent results. 

Build ? A vital question. It is a safe rule to let the other fellow 
do it to suit himself. However, if vou sell several building sites 



342 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 

for enough to build a bungalow or two do so to enliven the prop- 
erty, but go slowly and let the contracts, for your mind must be on 
your business in town. You will have enough enthusiasts over Sun- 
day to develop a congenial neighborly neighborhood. 

With these lines ends the writer's partial record of the twin 
hobbies of country living and housebuilding, which for a quarter of a 
century took the place of other amusements, but the lure of the 
lumber pile and the sound of saw and hammer, the call of the land, 
as seen and heard in rustling tree-top, silver melodies from copse and 
woodland, lowing herd, ripening harvest, swirl of bloom, will not 
down. Love of country life with its endless ramifications under- 
lying all realms in still in the blood, and we shall again sometime 
enjoy to the uttermost a real possession of the wild, man's rightful 
heritage. 



APPENDIX 



T\\'( ) houses of somewhat radical type are described below in 
response to a request reading, "From eight to ten thousand 
statements made from actual experience in building and lay- 
ing out country places, and a thousand or more photographs illus- 
trating country houses and country living make helpful data, but go 
one step farther, Mr. Author, and outline in a dozen pages a couple 
of type houses, one for the man of moderate means and one for the 
man of Health, and do it so thoroughly that the prospective owner 
will not expect a sow's ear to yield a silk purse. For instance, were 
I about to build a country house and undertook to follow the myriad 
suggestions of well-meaning friends, I might be a bankrupt before 
it was enclosed, but, aspiring to build a feature house, w T ith a type 
before me illustrating details that have been actually w T orked out, I 
could doubtless better outline a rough plan to submit to the architect." 

The House for the Man of Moderate Means. 

Location preferably within a mile of the station, about an acre 
of rich soil, thorough drainage, rising land, large trees, good neigh- 
borhood, no near nuisances nor prospect of any, town water, electric 
lights, sidewalks, good roads and lighted streets, are all desirable. 
The dwelling should be placed not less than seventy-five feet from 
the street anil face south, on a lot preferably about 200 feet square 
with an extended view that neither tree growth nor buildings will 
ever entirely shut out. 

House, 30 x 40, is enlarged by porch-room wings at each end, the 
west porch connecting with an esplanade floored with cement, if 
expense precludes the use of the more attractive terrazzo or brick, 
and ornamented with potted plants, the east wing joining the porte 
cochere. The house is side hilled so that portion in the rear is four 
feet under ground, and at the sides averages about two feet under 
ground a third of the width of the house, walls, as well as all 
footing courses built of rough uncracked field stones, in case such 
are on the place, or any hard stone, crude oil being mixed in the 
cement as a damp deterrent. Basement walls and those of first 
story are hollow brick, coated with rough cement and colored 
to harmonize with the hand-dipped stained shingles which cover 
upper story and roof, preferably laid on the latter with four and one- 
half inch weatherage. The hollow tile will be interiorly treated 
with tar and cement and air spaced, and gutters of copper and leaders 
crimped. 

Second story, studded, boarded, shingled and back-plastered, 
projects four inches, the under mold forming a narrow belt course. 



344 APPENDIX 

The shingle roof should have a two foot overhang and its kick-up 
rafters a fourteen-inch dip, the soffit covered with cement on gal- 
vanized wire lath. 

Windows on first story should be sash-hung, giving greater 
security, less draught and being more easily screened. They may be 
fitted with automatic sash bar locks, lower lights to be of plate glass, 
upper in small squares, or if in one pane it may be squared or 
diamonded with wooden strips laid over the glass. Extra size pockets 
save the expense of leaden weights. Second story windows in the 
main are casements with triple rabbeted and lipped jointure. The 
third floor should have sliding windows under the eaves for moderate 
light and much ventilation, but in the gables use wide curved bays 
with not over eighteen-inch centre projection, bracket supported, 
shaded by pent eaves. One eyebrow on the front and two lift dormers 
on the rear of the roof are ample. Set all windows when possible 
as mullioned triplets; head trim and apron practically in one piece, 
and build sleeping porches over east and west wings. 

Porch wings should be featured as outdoor eating and living 
rooms, with breeze-wooing open rails, space against the house wain- 
scoted, and capped with plate rack, smooth cement wall above painted 
and covered with thoroughly water-proofed burlap and the ceiling, 
cemented on galvanized wire lath, crossed with hollow cement or 
wooden beams, and verdure canopied. 

The floor of red cement, cored with galvanized wire mesh, 
has embedded in one of its twenty-four inch squares a patina colored 
copper arrow pointing north. Joints of the tapestry brick chim- 
ney are raked-out. Set in house wall on the east end, directly 
over the door-head a glass fronton, say eight feet wide and two feet 
high, as an over-lintel — a giant wardian case filled with plants and 
mosses from the woods, the inner sash arranged to open in extremely 
cold weather, a glimpse of woodland all the year around. On 
the south wall fit a mottoed sun dial with time equation. 

Entrance steps facing three ways in monument style are of red 
cement, crandaled for safety, and lead from porte cochere — glass 
roofed to avoid undue shadowing — to the east wing porch with 
its slightly convex red cement walk four feet wide. The door mat 
is inset, and an antique scraper bent to match the curved edge of 
the step firmly embedded in the cement. This glassed-in entrance 
porch gives a bower of bloom at all seasons. Flower beds border each 
side of the walk, sloping from porch foundation, and singing birds 
greet all comers. 

The oak-battened, iron-studded Dutch door is fitted with bulls' 
eyes, a ten-inch Bastile lock, and an electric knocker in the form of 
a knight's vizor in which is cut the name of the villa and on the 
marble sill is inscribed the word "Venitas." The porch is columned, 



HOUSE FOR MAN OF MODERATE MEANS 345 

the architrave centred with coat of arms and cement lions Hank the 
steps. 

Side hill construction means strenuous work in blind ditch 
drainingj tarring and cementing, hut aids in eliminating a large and 
somewhat useless cellar. 

With no greater foundation nor roof area, this plan will won- 
derfully increase the comfort and presence of the house and give most 
space for the money. 

The cellar may he made exceptionally light by having Moor and 
side walls of white marbleized cement and windows set from ceiling 
to two feet below grade, protected by brick and sand drained areas. 
The list must include double windows, rodent and tramp barring 
non-corroding screens and iron grilles, cellar floor drained to a man- 
hole, concave non-dust collecting corners cemented to ceiling line, 
plastered ceiling covered with metal, and heating pipes wrapped in 
asbestos. One corner will accommodate the coal bunkers and a pit- 
set boiler for hot water heating, protected overhead with an extra 
sheet of metal or asbestos. 

Beneath the cellar proper, suitably ventilated and blind drained, 
excavate a sub-cellar or favissa ten feet square with six foot stud 
and reached through a rail-guarded trap door inset in the cement 
floor. It will have a uniform temperature at all seasons. We have 
planned for an arched vault in chimney foundation concealed behind 
wooden sheathing as a receptacle for a safe with liquid explosive- 
proof seams. 

Two windows on opposite sides of the housekeeping closet will 
cheat the sour microbe out of many a meal. 

The kitchen entrance door is to be exteriorly lighted, also lock- 
controlled by the much maligned push button placed near an upstairs 
window to readily inspect after-dark callers. Range boiler will be 
firmly riveted to ceiling to save floor space, and Moor and walls 
covered with a light shade of dirt and tear-proof linoleum in two 
weights. The balance of wall length should be inexpensively chair 
railed. Windows can be protected with crescent "eye-peep" shut- 
ters, and service rooms have patent non-dust-making cement floors 
and sanitary bases, as easily cleaned as tile. 

Dining room, butler's pantry, kitchen mechanics, laundry and 
servants' lavatory are all planned to go on the lower Moor level, which 
is reached by two entrances, one on the south, and a service entrance 
on the north. 

The dining room, exceptionally Lighted and extra well blanketed 
in winter by double windows hinged from the top, each wicket 
ventilated, can go under the west wing porch, the ceiling necessarily 
low. An excellent size for this room would be 12 x 18. The small 
wall space, wainscoted to frieze line with chestnut uprights, is 
capped with plate rack, and the ceiling crossed with thin wooden 



346 APPENDIX 

strips. Preparation before laying the double floor to combat ground 
air and moisture must include thorough draining, cementing, tarring 
and air spacing. The chimney breast, built in line with west 
porch-room fireplace, can be faced with burnished copper. Inset in 
over-mantel a cleverly executed burnt wood tracing. The somewhat 
radical plan of this road-level-floor is made possible by the lay of 
the land which slopes sharply to the west as well as the south. The 
entire first story of thirty by forty feet is to be treated as one large 
gala room spaced to include stairs and chimney, alcoved to allow a 
stop-draught entrance vestibule from the porte cochere end, and ample 
room for library and reception corners. Good planning will make 
the three steps to a landing five feet wide, whose side can be pro- 
tected by a firmly fastened standing lion of cement used as a balus- 
trade and fronted by a settle, the end of the platform resting against, 
not in the chimney. Stairs trail upward back of the chimney to 
a mid-height landing, sunned by a golden-hued, opalescent, leaded 
glass window facing due north, hand rail of three-inch cotton 
rope covered with red velvet, not as hygienic as metal but in appear- 
ance less commercial, and fastened by brass sockets against the side 
wall. For the service portion of the house use the half-back-stair, 
and reach this landing behind the chimney, it can form part of 
a servants' porch and roof their summer dining room ; here will be 
an opening to deliver ice to the ice box, and in the house wall an 
alcove for milk bottles. This porch abuts against the rear 
and is roofed at the same gradient as the main house, which is 
carried down to cover the "outshot" projection. The chimney ten 
feet wide built of Harvard brick, with six-foot fire opening, will 
have over the inset stone shelf, seven feet from the floor, an iron 
grille-fronted-flambeau-fireplace where on festal occasions pitch pine 
knots flare, sputter, and fitfully brighten the entire room, metal rings 
pendant from a trolley iron that supports its front, a crane hung 
with trammels set in the brick work, and andirons and fire irons 
six feet high. An arched forward back, a narrow flue opening of 
six feet, a smoke shelf, and a flue lined with round tile tightly 
cemented at each collar, are forms of construction that effectually 
checkmate a smoking chimney and forever bar an ugly help-draw- 
cowl swivel-chimney-pot. The fireplace may have an iron reredos 
embossed with coat of arms, and a wide deep hearth of cement, and 
the six foot log burner can be changed to a grotto of ferns in summer, 
centred with a rose-lipped shell from the Orient. 

Our big 30 x 40 gala room will surely be wainscoted seven feet 
high with chestnut boarding set upright, capped with plate rack, and 
stained by acid to that shade seen in some storm tossed, sand and sun 
bleached bit of wreckage, and the twelve-foot ceiling inexpensively 
divided lengthwise by three heavy made-up beams cross-sectioned 
twice. Two plate glass mirrors five feet wide carried through base- 



LAY-OUT OF FIRST AND SECOND STORIES 347 

board to window cap, cloth draped at sides and top, will give mirage 
rooms that greatly extend the vista. 

Electroliers, built from old swords and bayonets, we will sus- 
pend by rusty chains and on side walls set sconces of bulb-tipped elk 
horns. 

In the grilled corner forming the library set back the shelf 
supports three inches from the front, conceal by three-inch dummy 
books firmly fastened in place, and nail a dust Hap across the edge 
of each shelf. Ivory tinted piaster bas-reliefs decorate the frieze 
of this corner. 

A folding iron gate concealed in a wall cupboard pocket would 
bar the night prowler by closing in both staircases at the top on the 
second floor. 

Second story. — The lion's share of this should be given up to 
the owners, the main room, 15 x 30, facing all points of the com- 
pass, a bay giving the north outlook. 

The boudoir end, planned as an upstairs sitting or morning 
room, should have double connection with the canvas floored space 
over the east porch wing,«one leading to a simple sleeping jog in the 
open, which coidd be made a near-tree room if a large tree edges 
the balcony rail by training its branches across the front, the other 
to a sun room, semi-conservatory, and aviary, with ample space to 
swing a mattress hammock. Centre the glass partition between 
sleeping jog and sun room with a pulley-hung pane of plate glass 
about four by six feet, all sash fitted for removal in summer. 

Electric fixtures for this room are best of glass. Entrance doors 
must have sloped sills and triple rabbeted joints. 

The bedroom end. grilled and portiered, should connect with 
a bathroom which also opens into the hall. The outside member 
of door trim, matching the picture molding, can be mitred into 
it, forming a panel over each of the three doorways, to be decorated 
with pictorial tapestry of nymph, purling brook, and primeval forest. 
Ceiling and corners may be coved. The master's weapon of defense, 
represented by a seven shooter, could be safely concealed in a leather 
pocket nailed on the back of a picture hung high on the wall. 

In the main room include a bay window seat lined with freshly 
cut cedar, a davenport with bookshelf at one end, and a tiny fire- 
place built up from rock foundation or inexpensively and safely car- 
ried on trolley irons placed on second story Moor beams, saving 
valuable space in the living room. 

The over-mantel in this suite can be a throated hood affair, 
seemingly made by bulging out the side wall, but really produced 
by a cement covered metal frame firmly riveted in chimney breast, 
projecting at the centre to eighteen inches, and tapering at sides and 
ceiling height into a plastered wall the full extent of the chimney 
front. A small jewel safe can be securelv bolted and cemented 



348 APPENDIX 

between studs and placed behind the chiffonier, and two mirror 
doors so hung as to be used for dress-fitting mirrors when open. 
The bathroom of this suite, furred down to seven-foot stud, if tiled 
to ceiling will avoid the use of capping which in time generally 
works loose. A porcelain-lined tub six feet long synonyms com- 
fort, and if set close to tiled floor and side-walls will eliminate those 
aggravating dust-gripping levels and corners. Metal plumbing fix- 
tures covered with porcelain shells and the exposed metal, where 
there is not too much wear, gold-plated, is not expensive and 
wonderfully effective, but the white and gold of such a bathroom 
might prove an envy generator of the rankest kind. Fit the shower 
with an odorless canvas curtain. Toilet, of low-down type, and 
basin (with pipe connection from side-walls) are solid porcelain, 
with safety shut-off in supply pipe close to fixtures. Complete the 
room with a wall-inset mirrored medicine closet, mirror doors, a 
window of leaded glass set five feet from the floor, sill of marble to 
match the tiling, glass and nickel fittings, and a pair of white 
enameled scales. The space over bathroom ceiling would make 
secret cupboards to be opened from the bedroom behind a wooden 
coving. 

The guest room must have a hygienic canvas-curtained shower- 
jog with swivel faucets, economically piped through the wall of an 
adjoining bathroom. 

Two small bedrooms and another sleeping porch can be crowded 
in. Closets should have dress rods, racks and shoe shelves. The 
sleeping porch as planned would be a hall extension in the open, 
with double Victorian doors which should be triple rabbeted and 
meet in the centre, with water-proof knuckle-and-elbow-joint. Such 
an arrangement banishes sleepless August nights, and bedroom blind 
doors bring added comfort. 

An electric bulb set in ventilating flue at ceiling line in the 
hall lights a dark corner and creates an up-chimney current, aiding 
to make a free-from-odor house. 

Under the eaves rivet a fire and burglar gong, wire-connected 
with the master's suite. 

The third story can be w T indowed and rough-studded to add 
at some future time a guest room fronted in the gables with wide 
bays which pay fifty per cent, dividend on their cost. In the rear 
plaster-finish a servant's room large enough for two single beds, 
although with a liberal use of the electrical handmaiden this house 
may not get beyond the one servant need. Complete the floor with 
servants' bathroom. The toggery and trunk room can be roughly 
boarded in and padlocked. 

The use of aluminum in escutcheon and butt will prevent injury 
to woodwork in cleaning. All bedrooms have burglar-proof mortise 
bolts, set above the reach of childish hands. 



WELL APPOINTED HOUSE OF GREATER COST 349 

Electric light installation may include a switch to light outside 
entrances from within, the interior from without and the entire house 
from the master's suite, light being a safe and effective defense, also 
base-plugs for bed-head and stand lights, as well as vacuum clean- 
ing connection. 

A fire pipe line, if placed from cellar to roof and elbowed into 
a perforated galvanized iron pipe extending the length of the ridge 
to flood the roof at a moment's notice, might prevent fire loss. 

Hose and pipe can be kept on each floor, in dust-proof glass- 
fronted cupboards inset between studding, concealed or not, as pre- 
ferred. Plumbing shut-offs should be in one place and legibly labeled. 

A non-rusting metal clothes chute from attic to cellar will save 
steps and possibly marred walls. 

The Well Appointed House of Greater Cost. 

Many of the features of the House-for-the-Man-of-Moderate- 
Means will naturally be incorporated in the more elaborate country 
villa, hence are not described. 

Grounds might schedule about five acres of ridge land with a 
commanding view and include a bit of rich meadow 7 , edged by a clear- 
running, pebbly-bottomed brook. Several genuine forest monarchs 
interspersed with smaller growth, a bearing orchard, and an abun- 
dance of small fruit would be important adjuncts, and land must 
be in a desirable neighborhood, preferably wdthin two miles of the 
station, and approached by good roads. 

The main house should not be less than 30 x 60 in area and 
somewhat irregular in form, with w T ing-porches at each end, one con- 
necting with an esplanade and the other joining a porte cochere, 
the style New American, with a touch of the Colonial in high 
pillared front. 

Lay up basement walls with rough or smooth stone in entasis 
effect, thoroughly w r indow T and fit for double windows in winter. 
Make exterior and main division walls of hollow brick, tarred and 
air-spaced within, and coated with smooth cement, and roof of tile, 
in harmonious shade, with superior water-proof under-covering. 
Lift dormer windows obtain in roof with ample window area in 
gables and side-walls, and lower panes of plate glass in small squares, 
leaded lights on stair landing, in bathrooms and in some transoms. 
Timber substantially with G. P. girders, as well as an occasional 
I-beam, and make house vermin and rat-proof. 

Basement should contain laundry with ventilated soiled clothes 
closet, drying machine, furnace room with big sectioral boiler 
(unless it is decided to have heating plant in an outbuilding), 
cement coal-bunkers (filled without injuring the lawn), a water 
heater, and dark preserve, also windowed housekeeping closets. Iron 
posts should be swathed with galvanized wire covered with cement 
and support substantial iron cement protected girders, and the ceiling 



350 APPENDIX 

asbestos covered. The space under awninged platform, which will 
cross the entire front of the dwelling as well as the west porch, 
could be utilized for an 83-foot bowling alley, with loop-the-loop 
return groove (if of glass it would neither sag nor warp). It must 
be well windowed at front and ends, connect with lavatory and 
shower, and have an exterior entrance. The billiard room placed in 
the basement to insure an immovable spirit-level foundation can be 
floored with scagliola, have fireplace sided with stone settles, large 
windows, and plastered walls of sand finish, appropriately calcimined. 

The west porch-room, duplicating the east in size, may be 
arranged for enclosing either with wire screen or glass as season 
of the year dictates, floor of red cement marked off in 24-inch squares, 
and fireplace and chimney breast of lichen-covered cobble stones, topped 
above roof with brick. At one side of the fireplace build a porch 
closet for wraps, books and toys. Rooms may be wainscoted to a 
height of seven feet with wall area above plate rack burlapped, painted 
and stenciled, the ceiling of cement on wire lath stained Pompeiian 
red, and crossed by two large ebonized beams. French casements 
connect with the pergola. 

The porte cochere, which for convenience will connect with the 
east wing, might have its outer end sheltered by a windowed, settled 
and fireplaced coachman's nook or ombra in whose exterior wall is a 
Pompeiian drinking fountain. Rust-proof metal lanterns set high 
above carriage top flank the sides of the stop-draught entrance. Arriv- 
ing guests peered down upon by repellent, rabid-mouthed, grotesquely 
molded gargoyles may on occasion be warmly welcomed by glow- 
ing, sputtering logs. 

The east porch-room, strictly an entrance, twelve by eighteen 
feet, reached by three steps cut from a single block of granite, a true 
century wearer, is fitted with sash-hung windows, to be com- 
pletely glassed in and heated in inclement weather. The centre 
walk to the front door may be built five feet wide, of red quarry tile, 
laid slightly convex, with half-inch white joints and the space on 
each side filled with plants set in mossy banks sloping upward to 
the top of the two-foot stone foundation. Drooping ferns, orchids, 
Southern mosses and Southern birds would give both color and 
life to such an entrance porch. Centreing the flare of the over-door- 
way can be inset shield or head and in recognition of the custom of 
the centuries a motto traced in the door sill. 

The lintel over a single seven by nine foot door whose wide open 
swing proclaims hospitality can be finished at the ends with carved 
griffin heads. 

Siding the entrance, with halberd close gripped, stands as warder 
a full suit of armor whose former owner possibly crossed swords 
with the Saracen. 



DETAILS OF THE VILLA OF IMPORT 351 

We are planning the Villa of Import as a two-level house. 
Within, three steps to the left will lead upward to a Loggia recep- 
tion room which connects with the staircase hall, while on the right 
of the entrance hall with its sixteen-foot cambered-beamed ceiling 
decorated in Arabesque Style, and at the same lower level, is the 
dining room, also with a sixteen-foot ceiling, hut domed, and a 
true ellipse, the lost corners utilized as closets in adjoining hall 
and room. A small electric, fern-edged fountain may centre a white 
tiled alcove, Large enough for a few potted plants, to brighten this 
somewhat unusual room. The outer wall of the house above the 
glass roofed alcove may he filled from arch to frieze height with large 
stained glass window in sylvan design. 

Fluted pilasters with Ionic caps edge window and door open- 
ings, and support pediments, the former with under-panel. All door 
head panels are decorated and a line of Colonial dentals circles 
the room. An ingle centred by a fireplace flanked by red leather- 
covered settles extends along the inside wall, its low seven-foot ceil- 
ing allowing a seven-foot-stud mezzanine den overhead, reached by 
a door from the minstrels' balcony which overlooks the entrance 
hall and is lighted by low leaded casements in an oriel window swing- 
ing open into the dining room near ceiling line. The dining room 
floor is of kiln-dried eight-inch oak planks, inset with ebonized keys 
four feet apart. Its sixteen-foot height is a pronounced feature, 
the door opening fourteen feet high, but a copper-set, stained-glass 
transom reduces the space to nine feet, the same height as the front 
door. Portieres are impressively hung the entire height of fourteen 
feet. A leaded, clear plate-glass cabinet can be built in the chimney 
breast, high above the mantel shelf. 

( )ne of the two doors leading to butler's pantry is fitted with 
rim protected dish shelves and pivoted, swinging to either din- 
ing room or pantry, while the other doorway is grilled down to a 
five-foot nine-inch height, screening upper pantry shelves, and has a 
closely fitting sliding door controlled by foot pressure. Care must 
be taken that neither door is in line with that opening from butler's 
pantry to kitchen. 

The balance of the floor area we will divide into library, living 
room, stud:o-c!ei, reception room anil palm-decorated corridor which, 
if built with groined ceiling, entered beneath spandreled arches, and 
its walls hung with family portraits, may aspire to the dignity of an 
ance.-tral hall. 

1 he library, sided with a semi-polygon bay, has one end wall 
built inward a foot to inset deep Georgian windows centred with 
book mark design, this plan allowing of broad cushioned settle with 
convenient ambry at either side. A wall fountain might fill a panel 
in the lower half of one Georgian window, protected in the outer 
house wall by a bas-relief in Caen stone. Bookcases should have not 



352 APPENDIX 

only leather dust guards, but ventilating metal roll curtains, securely 
locking on occasion. 

The living room with its barreled or segmented ceiling has 
appropriate mural paintings in half moons in the two end walls 
and a ten-foot square sheet of plate glass overlooks a semi-wild mid- 
summer tiny garden, a tangle of color springing up from greensward, 
glass imprisoned. Walls are Caen stone lined off in blocks. 

The little den reception room may connect with boudoir 
suite by a narrow, steep, hidden stairway reached through a sliding 
panel in a closet. 

Trim and floors of all rooms on this story, except one with 
intarsiatura trim and the white enamel kitchen, are oak, as are also 
all main staircases and halls. 

The main fumed oak staircase should be close string with thick, 
wide balustrade and panels of two-inch stuff in a sawed-out design, 
tool-edged. Stair rails, out of respect for childhood and age, as well as 
to protect the frequent recklessness of maturity, must be three-feet 
six-inches high. 

A minstrels' balcony mid-way on the stair can be supported 
by brackets ending in carved panther heads. A hall lavatory is 
practically stolen from the cellar, and reached by half-a-dozen steps 
leading downward. 

The newel text, worth careful thought, may be preached in 
wood, glass, and bronze. The wood, a squared newel with metal 
beaded corner insets, extends to trimmer height, and is braced against 
the ceiling by gorgon heads ; the glass, an eight-inch crystal globe 
capping a low brass newel, ends a metal balustrade, while the 
bronze, a Richard Coeur de Lion, flaunts aloft a banner of light, 
still in a righteous cause. 

A seven-foot high electrically equipped cathedral lantern hangs 
from the ceiling and a marble fernery half circles the space under 
arched stair soffit. 

On the second story a solid balustrade of lath and plaster makes 
a fine background for a strip of rare tapestry or a plaster frieze. 

Banish the funnel stairway by placing stairs from second to 
third story, shut in by portieres, at one side leaving a clear space for 
a high cambered beamed ceiling over the main staircase. 

Back stairs extend from basement to attic, with risers from first 
to second story hall of translucent wire glass, which aids materially 
in cellar lighting. Plastered stair soffits are firmly held by cross 
wooden moldings, and the upper half of the enclosed stair is of glass. 
Upper stairs may be built open string, with Colonial curlicues each 
side of step, balusters set alternately in twos and threes and tied 
with short pieces of wood two inches from top and bottom, the 
rail moulded to form a firm hand support. 



THE MASTER'S SUITE 353 

One ever-present dust gatherer, the corner where tread and 
riser meet, on the upper back, stair is banished by closely filling each 
corner with a three-sided bit of burnished brass. A mid-stair plat- 
form, lack of winders, and ample head room yield good accident 
insurance during the life of a house. 

That third story hall where pulpit-front built on long collar 
beams peers down at the stair climber (the scheme giving an unusually 
high hall ceiling) can be lighted by three crowns hung on a chain, 
each circle a trifle larger than the one above, daytime lighting being 
accomplished by a wide roof lift dormer. 

Among kitchen appointments (the range end being galleyed) 
include a glass-set hood over a combination gas, electric and coal 
range, with ash pit and brass pipe connections, an auxiliary gas 
heater set under the easy to heat copper boiler, a garbage incin- 
erator, grease trap, soap-stone table tops, and a safety valve on 
the boiler. Kitchen walls are best if white tiled to a height of 
at least five feet, all trim painted enamel white, and the floor of 
non-dust-crumbling cement bisected with strips of comfort-yielding 
cork matting. This room as well as all servants' quarters should 
have a sanitary base, vermin-balking walls and corners, and floors 
and walls deadened. Bedrooms over the kitchen as well as the 
range chimney are better if deadened and air-spaced. 

The sink of seamless porcelain and a set wash basin which solves 
an aggravating domestic problem will be six inches higher than 
usual in both kitchen and butler's pantry, and the radiator of the 
latter made in the form of a plate warmer. The range hood will be 
aided in its efforts to send odors skyward by a small electric fan 
placed in the chimney flue. A water pipe set close beside the range 
conveniently fills pots and kettles, and a metal scrub cloth box can 
be fastened against the chimney breast connecting with a brick, 
air-lifting ventilating chamber, which adjoins the always heated 
range flue. 

An enameled steel cabinet, a metal frame over the table, cook- 
ing utensils of non-rusting and non-flaking aluminum and a fireless 
cooker set at waist height should be among the appointments. A 
funnel-ceilinged corridor proves a court of last resort for all kitchen 
odors. Trim in the service portion of the house should be plain and 
non-dust holding, and beaded wainscot if used of convex mold. 

The basement laundry will have large windows, wooden floors, 
and make an additional sitting hall for servants, its four porcelain 
tubs equipped with non-projecting faucets, set back to back in the 
centre of this well-lighted room, and when not in use wooden covered, 
forming a table. 

On the second story plan the master's suite the full length 
of the house, forty feet, and eighteen feet wide, the fourth com- 
pass point compassed by a broad bay. A room of four exclama- 



354 APPENDIX 

tion points, size, air, sunshine, view, rivaling in comfort a city 
apartment, but far larger, divorced from air shaft and alley, and in 
a realm of pure air and health yielding sunshine. Two-thirds of the 
forty feet would make a morning boudoir or upstairs sitting room; 
the bedroom and bathroom end to be grilled and portiered. This 
bedroom may have a fireplace in an ingle, with side settles, and be 
connected with a glass-enclosed room built over three-quarters of the 
roof of the porch-room, making a true sun-room featured with 
flowering plants. The outdoor sleeping gallery floored with canvas 
not so lavishly painted as to crack, covers the remainder of the 
porch-room roof and connects with a roofed gym. over the porte 
cochere, to be decorated with rough bark covered boxes of plants atop 
the rail, in winter changed to evergreens. It can be used as a corridor 
to reach the small rest-room with fireplace, built over the coachman's 
nook, in one of our houses termed a luxury until use proved it a 
necessity. Over the gym. and rest-room, under the roof, a low, 
well-lighted and ventilated pistol gallery is bulwarked by the big 
stone porte cochere chimney breast. 

The lower part of a closet in the master's suite conceals an 
electrically-protected silver safe. The bathroom of this suite, featured 
with shower jog formed by two closets, one opening to the bath- 
room, a fireplace, tub six feet long, a bidet and a shut-off valve toilet, 
has the ceiling preferably furred down to seven feet, side-walls tiled 
to ceiling, floors tiled and sill of marble. Mirrored doors, medicine 
closets, a high-set leaded light window and hall connection are most 
desirable. 

A guest room with bath closet, one general bathroom and three 
additional bedrooms, one of which may acceptably join a sleeping 
porch, should be on this floor. A bedroom with double doors con- 
nects with an adjoining bedroom and another has a shaving jog 
arranged for ample light night or day. A built-out sun bathroom 
supported by heavy brackets, facing south and west, and a skylight 
flooding the little alcove with health-giving rays may come under 
the head of extravagance but comfort will heartily endorse its build- 
ing. One bathtub can be inset eighteen inches and rail protected, 
the space below taken from a closet. Another may be planned with 
a square tub 4' x 4' and fourteen inches deep for children. Bathroom 
appointments might schedule also a shampoo fixture, sitz-bath, elec- 
tric bath cabinets and in one a cane-seated chair to disguise the noise- 
less toilet. A Pompeiian, plant decorated bathroom will be lighted 
by an electrically fitted glass dome. Outflow pipes should be twice 
the size of inflow and plumbing pipes kept from exterior walls and 
when crossing ceilings (crossings to be mainly in the cellar) asbestos- 
covered, decreasing the drip from condensation. An air chamber 
cushions the noisy back kick of water pipes and back air pipes near 
hot water pipes give uptake draft. 



BEDROOMS AND BATHROOMS 355 

Water and heating pipes should be carried to porch rooms and 
sleeping porches and when not used capped, and sill cocks, including 
one non-freezing, installed at important exterior points. 

Careful planning will evolve a secret room 6' x 6' x 6'. 

In a Moorish room the bed alcove may be arched from Boor to 
ceiling with a Moorish arch fifteen feet wide at the centre and the 
same design carried out in the brick arch of a fireplace. Transoms 
ma\ he regulated by inset wall fixtures instead of the usual ugly 
adjuster, some panels fronting closets fitted with invisible locks and 
hinges anil where wainscots are not used the base trim of main rooms 
made eighteen inches high. 

The second-story hall will have a fireplace and in a far away 
corner on this floor it may be possible to work in a convenient, 
windowed trunk and storage room and a housemaid's sink closet. 
A dark hall and stair landing may be lighted by a glass transom over 
a bedroom door, and a bedroom with but one outside wall gains 
ventilation and light from a transom or translucent glass window 
opening into a hall. 

The silver sheen of the bird's-eye maple room in both trim and 
furniture can be kept by selecting a northern exposure, realizing that 
sun-baked bird's-eye maple takes on a dingy yellow meerschaum shade. 

A curved top bed-head alcove with twin beds placed on a round- 
cornered dais would permit at either side closets for madame and 
master. Over a brass rod extending outward from the wall tapestry 
may be draped. 

The theft of a bedroom closet from a larger room without 
causing an ugly jog to ceiling height in either can be easily accom- 
plished by building a false front cabinet six feet high, the interior 
to be lathed and plastered and entered from the smaller room. 

Bedrooms not connected with bathrooms will have dressing 
rooms, allowing open window sleeping of the chilliest but healthiest 
kind. 

The third story shall have one large room with a broad bay, 
three servants' bedrooms, and a bathroom sided with sheets of white 
glass. On this floor there could be a cement- walled, wooden-floored, 
children's play room, deadened under-floor, and walls decorated 
with nursery tales, vaulted ceiling painted to represent a winter's 
sky, and the explanatory astronomical key framed in a door panel. 
Windows should be high and wide and protected by low grilles. A 
tower billiard room ceiled to the peak might be decorated with fleecy 
clouds and darting swallows. In an attic studio on the north, 
windows should be guarded by low metal grilles, and extend from 
one foot above the floor to ceiling height. From the peak could be 
suspended a trio of geese headed due north. 

The clerestory, our room-in-thc-air, has little in common with 
the hot, barely-enough-space-to-turn-in, cupola of the village squire, 



356 APPENDIX 

often half-filled with dried apples, musty newspapers, and dis- 
carded garments. This is a plate glass-walled view room with 
overhanging sun and rain sheltering roof, cooled by weather-proof 
ventilators placed at its highest point, aided by electric fans, the 
fireplace, out of respect to Dame Architecture, fitted with a gas log, 
and fronted by a broad davenport. 

One of the eight or ten fireplaces in the house shall have a plate 
glass, brass rimmed screen extending the view of the cheerful blaze 
four feet up chimney, and a fender topped with a narrow leather 
seat fronting the hearth. In one room the over-mantel can be sup- 
ported by caryatides, in another the hood covered with leather tooled 
in heraldic design in shimmering silver, and in a third the shelf sup- 
ported by ormolu brackets with onyx facing. 

A picture window set not over four feet from the floor and centre- 
ing a chimney breast (which is to have two flues and a split chimney 
at ridge line) causes, at times, a seven-hued winter sunset to vie 
in coloring with a seven-hued driftwood fire. 

As the raised hearth increases fire risk, we will omit it. A Tif- 
fany three-faced feudal fireplace, with blazing fagots flashing three 
ways, could be built in "that brain room" where the roof slopes to 
plate line. 

The throne of the fire king must centre his group of devotees, 
rather than elbow too closely door and window. In a draughty 
hall arrange for iron baffles to semi-shackle that ninety per cent. 
up-chimney waste of heat. 

A far-away room has a mantel face of cement sprinkled with 
silver, gold and bronze powders, and thimbles are inset in chimney 
breast in several attic rooms and upper hall. 

Mirrors are much in evidence, some triplicate for dress-fitting 
and with special overhead lights. In a room facing north, wall 
mirrors might be so juggled as to give a strong reflected light, and 
narrow mirrors between door and window openings crossed by 
curved muntins, but none so set over a mantel as to reflect the ugly 
back of a clock. 

Decoration, whether rococo, the best in Nouveau art, burlap, 
paint, or paper, covers a wide field. In the dining room, Colonial, 
pictorial designs of country life can be used, in one room restless 
red and possibly in the library restful green, but polychrome effects 
will be absolutely barred, as well as the stain wrongly placed. 

Burlap painted, then roughly cloth-rubbed before drying, will 
give an hygienic surface and also a suggestion of the Japanese silk 
fibre effect, minus its microbe-catching ends. 

As a wood preservative, air is often as efficacious as paint and 
certainly does not promulgate dry rot, at times the result of painting 
green wood. Oxygen, whether permeating lungs of man or fibres of 
matter, prolongs life. 



FIREPLACES AND DECORATION 357 

Closet walls should be painted and then coated with spar varnish. 

In place of the barn-like, all-wooden sliding door, we can use 
leaded glass in the upper half, the pockets ceiled against dust and 
noise. In the basement the outer door should be four feet wide, and 
glazed to aid in making the term "basement" a misnomer. 

Recesses there can be in goodly measure, whether in the 
form of a usable ingle spaced for unscorched comfort, a billiard 
alcove large enough to squelch profanity, a solarium — a veritable 
Sahara in July and August but a welcome retreat in March and 
November — a simple jog under a staircase or 'gainst a chimney, 
arranged for a built-in chest of drawers with rollers and guide strips. 
a nest of pigeon holes, or a pokehole closet for magazines and papers, 
remembering that closets and bays make good safety valves for ugly 
square box rooms. 

Parquetry floors of seven-eighths stuff instead of thin veneer 
prevent warping but should not be narrowed by strongly contrast- 
ing borders. 

The passing of the door saddle means less dust, disturbance of 
carpets and space shortening but generally at floor line a wider 
opening. 

A developing closet will have porcelain sink, ventilating fan, 
and colored glass inset in door. 

The list of hardware requirements should include espagnolette 
bolts, double-action butts, drop escutcheons, cut glass knobs, old- 
fashioned latches, bead-edged, brass finger plates, window lifts and 
check valves. A gilded, decorated reception alcove could have gold- 
plated hardware at moderate expense. 

All casements and glass doors should have rubber plugs set in 
the door frames, and window stops may have adjustable socket 
screws to match hardware. 

Blinds and gutters are essentials requiring our best thought. 

Copper flashing and calking with oakum and white lead at the 
right time, and in the right place, save much trouble farther on, 
and effectually circumscribe King Moisture's realm. 

Seaweed, felt, and heavy paper will be necessary as floor and 
wall linings and for sound deadening. 

In plastering (made non-sound carrying) where angle irons are 
not used corners are rounded in the plaster. All walls are plas- 
tered to the floor. 

Every ceiling in the house will be insured by either canvas or 
burlap firmly fastened against it and decorated as desired, but neither 
this nor wall covering of any kind should be used until months of 
drying out have brought the walls to a state of absolute dryness. 
The correct proportion of plaster of paris, proper mixing, applica- 
tion, and non-freezing of plaster prevent pockmarked, easily rubbed 
walls. 



358 APPENDIX 

Box-windows sliding upward into the house wall give wider 
vision in a low-studded room. In the nursery, windows may be set 
high and partially metal grilled, reaching to ceiling height where 
there is more sunshine to the square foot, and in laundry and ser- 
vants' hall, where the ground and step-down area admit, should span 
the entire space from floor to ceiling. In front of cellar windows 
ribbed glass reflectors can be suspended, greatly increasing the light. 
A western picture window realistically gilt framed and wire hung 
would shame the artist's most impressive sunsets, while a more pre- 
tentious picture window could be pivoted. Corner windows give 
wider views and less draughty ventilation. Windows should be 
hung with metal chains over brass pulleys. Non-corroding semi- 
invisible screens with insect escape cover the entire window and, as 
a farther disguise, have their hinged frames painted to match the 
exterior trim. Elizabethan grouped windows would certainly give 
tone to the dining room. Overhead the highest second story sleepers 
we will place ventilating hood windows in the gable peaks, hinged 
from the top and swinging outward, using as storm-warders incon- 
spicuous baffles back of the windows. Step-up platforms will lower 
high attic dormers. 

All windows shall be fitted with non-rusting metal weather- 
strips and in some inset glass hinged ventilators. 

The sleepless arch as seen in the round-headed Roman, the 
peaked Tudor, and the ogived Gothic, we will use in hall, billiard 
room, stair and fireplace opening, and on a side porch as an effective 
stone flying arch. In the same side porch the windows can be made 
to drop downward into the rail, being protected by a weather cap, 
but the old-fashioned stored in the basement or attic method is gen- 
erally the most satisfactory. 

The electrical field will include an arrangement to close one 
bathroom door when the other opens, a cut-glass cabinet electrically 
lighted, electric range, washer and mangle in kitchen and laundry, 
and a device to keep that block of ice frozen. 

In winter the electric fan will force radiators to do double work 
and at all seasons fan dishes dry, effectually supplanting the too 
often insanitary dish towel. The dining room will have a floor bell 
and in a dry basement tool room we can plan for an electric forge 
and lathe. Opening and closing a hall closet door will automatically 
turn on or off an electric light, a check valve preventing waste. 
Every closet must have electric light, either cord or wall hung. 

Radiators ample in capacity may be concealed with settle, silk 
fringe, stair riser, metal grille, or other device, remembering that 
when glass exceeds one-eighth of the wall area greater heating 
capacity is required. 

In the awninged, cement-floored veranda fronting the house and 
roofing the proposed bowling alley, the rail can be broken by two 



EXTERIOR FEATURES 359 

projecting settles which, if placed equidistant from ends, will vary 
the stiff, straight balustrade line and give unobstructed view; gal- 
vanized iron wire mesh forming the seat under water-proofed canvas 
cushions. 

A side porch will be shielded but not shadowed from the north- 
west winter winds by a framed sheet of plate glass fastened firmly at 
settle top and porch eave, and the lower light of the porch window 
screened with leaded glass. 

Cellar bulkhead doors fitted with wire-glass set in metal cov- 
ered frames, buttresses at their sides raised three feel above grade. 
will balk that burning-over fire that sometimes reaches a bulk- 
head door; built of cement and hollowed for plants they would 
brighten the servants' porch end of the house. 

The swimming pool, an outdoor affair, glass enclosed in winter, 
serves the double purpose of reflecting the villa "from turret to 
foundation stone," as well as flowering shrub and towering elm, and 
gives exhilarating enjoyment on warm sultry days, the incoming 
water filtered for germ protection. Electric lights circle its edge. 
The expense of building may be somewhat curtailed as the soil 
can be used to grade the pool-centred esplanade connecting by an 
arbre-arched gate with a patio, which will greatly aid in giving a 
true infront and outfront. 

A fireproof filing-cabinet-room, 10'xlO'xlO' (which may prove 
a grand money saver) can be built about fifty feet from the house, 
in which to store maps, deeds, valuable papers, films, plates, etc. 
Constructed of cement, lined with boiler iron, and electrically con- 
nected with the owner's room by wire buried in a cement-grouted 
ditch, it will prove a first class time and money saver, located on trifle 
lower ground than the house site, and the roof, capped with a belve- 
dere of cement, iron and tile, it would make a capital tea and break- 
fast room as well as a siesta nook, the connecting walk to the east 
porch-room shaded by a vine-embowered and plant centred pergola 
which, with belvedere, would completely disguise the somewhat com- 
mercial appearance of the filing-room, give presence far in excess of 
the additional expense, and improve infront and outfront. 

If a tree grows close to the servants' porch encircle it with the 
platform that leads to the clothes yard, and in the largest limb 
crotch build a tree eyrie reached by railed and platformed steps. 
From its topmost branches a bird trolley can travel to the box- 
greenery window in the sewing-room, and occasionally the more 
courageous songsters may venture among the house plants. 

In the exterior wall, as in the old Saxon days, may be attempted 
a copper or terra cotta panel designed along graffito lines. 

The pergola, which can be made an extravagant adjunct or an 
inexpensive adornment, will help greatly in dragging down the 
height of the house and connect it with the extension Colonial flower- 



360 APPENDIX 

garden which joins the west terrace. "That garden is a lovesome 
spot, God wot, rose plot, fringed pool, ferned grot." 

Whitewash in colors will enable us to line out the entire first 
and second floors on the greensward before lifting a shovelful of earth, 
and we shall be greatly aided in building by archetypes of wood or 
cardboard, one-eighth scale, of each house, which can be dissected and 
changed before nailing up the first batten board. Grounds can be 
laid out in miniature and photographs and planting arranged and 
rearranged in the model. After house is enclosed we can tempor- 
arily partition it in a day with mason's grounds for inspection and 
change. 

Conveniences ranging from a key-cabinet to a thermostat 
include a coil of water piping in the ice-box, niches at each side of 
the front door, in hall wall, over entrance door, and in gala room, 
a telephone jog large enough to hold a guest book, and a utility closet. 

Careful planning to fit the house to the site will make the liv- 
ing room face south and west, dining room east, library north, and 
kitchen north and east, remembering also that poor landscaping and 
an unnecessary net work of drives and paths may blemish a fine con- 
ception. 

While our two type houses embody a wide range of features, 
the get-it-in-at-all-hazards spirit, which so persistently dogs the 
footsteps of the obsessed amateur builder, must be strenuously fought. 
It is good planning to have three stop-off stations in that journey 
from batten board to latch key, giving at each two or three days of 
thought, before studding, before plastering, before trimming. Altera- 
tions then made would often prevent those ugly afterthought work- 
outs which raspingly stand by one for life. 

In house building we often lose sight of such expensive essen- 
tials as foundation, roof, chimney, window, and door, the matter- 
of-course things, but are apt to most enjoy and more clearly remem- 
ber and note for reference the comparatively inexpensive things: 
that marble door sill, a motto, a carved newel, a segmented ceiling, 
a swinging leaded casement, a picture window, the lines of an unus- 
ually high, undoored opening, a white and gold combination in a 
bathroom, semi-conservatory-entrance porch, white tiling against 
green plants, plate glass windows, sleeping jog, settled ingle-nook, 
niche, even such an insignificant matter as alternating three 
balusters on one step and two on the next. It is easy to name a 
mightily interesting list of things which, judged by the strict rule 
of essentials, are unnecessary, yet well worth the doing and minister 
hourly to the enjoyment of owner and guest as long as the house 
is a house. 



SIXTY SOMEWHAT UNUSUAL AND EFFECTIVE FEATURES 
THAT WE HAVE USED 



Ambry 311 

Astronomical-domed ceiling- in 

children's play room 228 

Bath tul) 4'x4'xl'2" for children 231 
Bookshelves extending- across a 
room without a break in 

book line 219 

Burglar-proof staircase 226 

Cellar floor, walls, and ceiling 

white marbleized 225 

Clerestory, plate glass, with 

fireplace and wide overhang 234 

Coal saver (in use for 25 years) 232 

Cold grapery of inexpensive de- 
sign 249 

Concealed lawn barriers, ex- 
tending- vistas 243 

Conservatory as entrance vesti- 
bule to the house 312 

Crater garden 150 

Crow's nest in the hemlocks., lot 

Doers, four in one, fifteen feet 

wide 277 

Electric light in chimney for 

ventilation 231 

Entrance steps and stairs over 
cellar stairs with glass 
risers for lighting cellar... 113 

Fernery under stairs in place of 

a boxed-in closet 183 

Feudal drawbridge and moat.. 2!4 

Fireplace in porte cochere and 
porte cochere coachman's 
nook with stone settles.... 124 

Fireproof riling cabinet room, 
10'xlO'xlO', of cement, de- 
tached from house 303 

Flambeau-wall-fireplace 222 

Ford of concrete with stepping 

stones at side 71 

Freak fireplace connecting with 
two rooms, and with sepa- 
rating reredos 320 

Guest stair, concealed 225 

Hall lavatory stolen from base- 
ment 1 5 2 

Hanging balcony held firmly 

through two partitions.... 14 6 
Hobbed fireplace opening 10'8" 174 
Hole-in-ground greenhouse . . . 247 
House enlarged vet not en- 
larged 158 

Imprisoned wild garden 311 

Lintel, verdure - crowned (a 

large wardian case) 325 



Map of escape carved in foun- 
tain rim centreing the maze 244 

-Mirage rooms 230 

Moat and drawbridge 2 44 

Norman feudal tower used as 

pole-centred fire escape.... 140 

Overhang of eight feet lower- 
ing and cooling house 171 

Partition wall of leaded glass 
extending- to ceiling over 
an arched entrance to ceil- 
ing 103 

Partitioning the entire house in 

a day 328 

Porch closet for books, wraps, 

and toys 229 

Porte cochere wire glass roofed 
to prevent shadowing- of 
rooms ( Appendix) 

Recessed balcony in hall over 
staircase, giving height and 
light to stairway below.... 197 

Rest room 234 

Secret rooms 229 

Settle cut in ledge at entrance. 132 

Sleeping jog (not a room) 228 

Sound-proof, isolated room for 

reading or writing 124 

Stalking lion stair rail 170 

Steps and buttresses cut from a 

solid block of granite 216 

Sub-cellar, or favissa, of uni- 
form temperature the year 
around, well drained and 
ventilated 237 

Telescopic room 270 

Telescopic window 216 

Throated mantel hood, a metal 
frame, bulged over plaster 

of side wall 233 

Toddlers' garden 61 

Trussed transom window bar.. 144 

Ventilating corridor for kitchen 

odors 223 

Veranda or house, if vine-clad, 
to be oiled rather than re- 
painted 312 

Veranda roof-eye large enough 
to light first floor rooms.. 

< Appendix) 

Veranda with burlap covered 
walls over smooth cement, 
above wainscot and plate 
rail 239 

Veranda with ivy-covered ceil- 
in- 115 

Yacht studio on land 282 



THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY LATCH STRINGS TO COM- 
FORT AND LUXURY IN HOUSE AND GROUNDS. A 
DESIRABLE HOUSE CAN BE BUILT WITHOUT ONE 
OF THEM, YET ALL ARE SOMETIMES USED 



Ancestral portrait gallery 21S 

Arboretum 74, 104 

Arched stair soffit 183 

Arched-under house and road- 
level-house 307 

Arches, flying- 310 

Areas draining into bricked 

and sand-bottomed dry well 144 

Armored knights 242 

Arrow compass set in loggia 

cement floor 274 

Aviary 243, 2!>6 

Awninged veranda 239 

Back plastering - 281 

Back stair tread with dustless 

corners ( Appendix) 

Balustrade, solid, of lath and 
plaster construction capped 

with wood 183 

Base eighteen inches high 237 

Base, sanitary 229, 282 

Basement appearance eliminated 
by use of large windows, 
grilles, columns, and white 

enamel paint 224 

Basement billiard room 331 

Bath cabinet, electric 231 

Bath closet combining bath, 

basin, and swivel faucet.. 230 

Bathroom fixtures, gold plated 231 
Bathroom with barreled or 

domed ceiling 231 

Bathroom with seven foot stud, 
economically tiled to ceil- 
ing, uncapped, and readily 

heated 316 

Bathroom with two electrically 

closing doors 231 

Bath tub inset in floor 199 

Bath tub six feet long 230 

Bay, semi-polygon 189 

Beamed and stuccoed interior 

walls 140 

Bed alcove with curved top.... 197 

Bed dais with rounded corners. 227 

Belvedere 208 

Bird trolley 39 

Bookcases with ventilating, 

sliding curtains 219 

Borders of English ivy 243 

Bowling alley 225 

Box front stoop (Appendix) 

Box greenery window 5 

Cabinet of enameled steel 223 

Campanile 213 

Canvas, odorless 231 

Canvas protected ceilings 321 

Caryatides supporting mantel.. 

175, 233 
Cedar lined closets and settles. 228 
Ceiling, barreled, with deco- 
rated half-moon ends 189 

Ceiling cambered 325 

Ceiling, coved 325 

Ceiling finished to tower peak.. 155 

Cellar ceiling asbestos covered 236 



Cellar corners concave filled 
with cement to ceiling- 
line 224 

Cellar floor laid to drain 224 

Cellar windows screened and 
iron barred from bug, 
rodent and burglar 225 

Cement ash bin, metal covered 
connected with range and 
holding several tons (Appendix) 

Cement flower boxes for win- 
dow sills and step but- 
tresses 213 

Cement mixed with crude oil 

for foundation work 322 

Cement walks with asphalt ex- 
pansion seams 310 

Chandelier built of swords and 

bayonets 281 

Chandelier or electrolier of 
non - corroding glass for 
conservatory 219 

Chimney in porch or den made 

of lichen covered stones.... 105 

Chimneys split into two parts 

above roof-tree 234 

Chimneys, exterior, twin, of 

stone 146 

Chute of cement for coal deliv- 
ery from bin to furnace.... 224 

Chute of non-rusting metal for 

clothes 199, 299 

Closet, secret 228 

Closet, ventilated and locked for 
soiled clothes in laundry. . 

199, 229 

Conservatory on second story 

balcony 295 

Convex screens for casement 

windows 215 

Copper and brass thefts pre- 
vented by using substitutes 314 

Cupboard, exterior, for ice de- 
livery 224 

Cupboard, exterior, for milk and 

groceries 224 

Dining room at different level. 130 
Dining room, mirrored and cir- 
cular 133 

Dish-washing apparatus 223 

Donjon and postern gates 132 

Door heads framed in tapestry, 

burnt wood, or plaster casts 242 

Doors, blind, for bedrooms 227 

Doors, double, between bed- 
rooms 295 

Doors, double, on balcony, with 
knuckle and elbow joint 

centre 311 

Doors, double, to linen closet.. 
Doors, four feet wide, in base- 
ment 197 

Doors, invisible 228 

Doors, oak banded and iron 

studded 217 

Doors, seven by nine, single,. . . . 161 
Doors, pivoted, swiveled and 

shelved for pantry 152 



LATCH STRINGS 



353 



Doorway fourteen feet high.... 130 
Drawers fitted with rollers and 

guide strips 235 

Dressing rooms heated con- 
nected with sleeping jog... L9*3 

Drying machine 238 

Must flap for books 219 

Eighteen inch baseboards 324 

Electric bath cabinet 231 

Electric control of exterior 
doors and lights from 

within 231 

Electric handmaiden 238 

Electric knocker 237 

Elimination of door saddle.... 317 

Elliptic dining room 133 

Esplanade 203, 214, 217 

Faucet, non-projecting -24 

Fire control devices 331 

i' ireplace and chimney breast 

tiled to ceiling- line 233 

Fire line stack from cellar to 

roof 331 

Fire pice, perforated, along- 

roof ridge 332 

Fireplace at each end of room. 218 
Fireplace, copper face breast.. 233 

Fireplace, feudal 232 

Fireplace hood of embossed 

leather 233 

Fireplace, second story hall.... 22- r , 
Fireplace, summer treatment of 233 
Fireplace with plate glass inset 
in chimney breast above 

opening 233 

Fireplace with settle fender of 

leather 232 

Fire ropes of wire.^ 226 

PMre tools six feet high 174 

Floor deadening over kitchen 
and in servants' quarters 

and nursery 293 

Floral calendar planting 212 

Floral ribbon bordering a drive 212 
Flue constructed of round tile 318 
Flue, ventilating, at ceiling 

height 223 

Forecourt 214 

Forest nymph faces in wain- 
scoting 241 

Fountain, electric 103 

Fountain, wall 180 

Four compass point room 135 

Free-from-odor house 223 

Funnel stair banished 174 

Furnace in outbuildings con- 
nected by pipes 236 

Garbage incinerator 223 

Gargoyles at spoutheads and 

under brackets 1G0 

Garret sanctum 222 

Gas water heater in kitchen... 223 
Gate fastening to prevent 

sagging 61 

Gazebo 203 

Geese, trio of, suspended from 
ceiling to show points of 

compass 241 

Glass panel in sleeping jog.... 

i Appendix) 

Gold plated faucets 231 

Gold plated and aluminum hard- 
ware 231 

Gorgon head 161 

Gravel pits beautified '.'2 

Grease trap 223 

Groined ceiling 329 

Grotto under gazebo L'0-4 

Guest book nook 238 



Gymnasium with roof, and 
open sides over porte 

cochfire 122 

Hall draughl stopper 160 

Hall twenty-five feel high 237 

Hall with feudal treatment .... 217 
Hall with barreled ceiling long 

and narrow 322, 329 

Hardware, invisible locks and 

hinges 228 

Hedge of sweet brier roses .... 67 
Highway bordered by Wier's 

cut-leaf maple 77 

Hooded Caen stone mantel with 
rounded edges and slightly 

tapering 189 

Horse posts with roof shelter 

and screened light 244 

House enlarged, yet not en- 
larged 158 

House number inset in cement 

walk 311 

Ice house vine-screened 71 

Ideal suite 135 

Infront and outfront, both 

fronts 252 

Ingle seats 189 

Insect escape in screen 216 

Inset mats in porch and bath- 
room 231 

Intarsiatura trim 324 

Keeping-room 5 

Keyless and never closed bird 

restaurant •_ 101 

Key rack for duplicate keys. . . . 238 
Kitchen enameled white with 

white tiled floor and walls. 

193. 222 
Knocker, a knight's vizor traced 

with name 154 

Lantern, King Alfred, seven 

feet high, chain-hung 237 

Lock in Eastile style 221 

Log cabin 221 

Loggia with service door to 

pantry 218 

Lookout 199 

Lych gate with mottoed arch.. 243 

Mantel of weather-beaten lum- 
ber 222 

Marquise formed by veranda 

overhang 132 

Metal box near kitchen flue for 

scrub cloths 223 

Metal ceilings over plaster in 

laundry, kitchen and cellar 222 
Metal, sheets of, suspended 

over furnace 236 

Mezzanine den filched from 

above an ingled alcove.... 193 

Minarets 213 

Minstrels' balcony 179 

Mirror doors 230 

Mirror with muntins 230 

Mirrors cut through baseboards, 
filling space between win- 
dows 230 

Mirrors for juggling with north 

light 216 

Mirrors, triplicate 231 

Model of new house in wood, 

cement or cardboard 328 

Moorish arched alcove full 
width of room from floor to 

ceiling 155 

Moorish arched fireplace 155 

Morning room 230 

Mottoes 219. 332 

Newel, crystal-capped 183 



364 



LATCH STRINGS 



Newel to ceiling, supporting 
opening braced with gorgon 

heads 183 

Niches siding front door... 161, 238 
Non-freezing outdoor sill-cocks 322 
North room most suitable for 

bird's eye maple 228 

Nursery walls instructively 

decorated and indestructible 228 

Oil stove made hygienic 3, 247 

Ombra 129 

Oriel windows on stairs and be- 
tween rooms 183 

Outdoor dining room 277 

Outdoor dining room for serv- 
ants 115 

Outlet pipe twice the size of 

inlet 232 

Outshot 7 

Panels of Caen stone in bas- 
relief for interior and ex- 
terior 189 

Patio 218 

Pent eaves 7 

Pergolad clothes yard 239 

Piazza rail broken by project- 
ing seats 239 

Picture gallery 218 

Picture window gilt framed and 

wire-hung 215 

Pistol gallery 122 

Pit-set boiler (Appendix) 

Plants, anywhere 78 

Plate glass ventilator 215 

Plate warmer 220 

Platforms and veranda floors of 

cement with wire core 214 

Pompeiian drinking fountain.. 129 
Pool in courtyard as reflector. 245 

Pool, swimming 200 

Porch ceiling, beamed, cemented 

and decorated 240 

Porch door side screened with 

single sheet of plate glass. 232 
Projection of four inches over 

second story (Appendix) 

Quarry tile, one-half inch joint 207 

Rabbets triple jointed 311 

Radiators concealed 311 

Radiators inset back of stair 

risers 236 

Rail, silken hand 183 

Ramp paved with rough cast 

square bricks 220 

Ramp to belvedere and gazebo. 220- 
Range, glass-hooded to light a 

dark corner 193, 223 

Range with ash chute to cellar. 223 
Ran^e with thermometer at- 
tached 223 

Range with ventilating electric 

chimney fan 223 

Ravine reached by vine-clad 

steps of railroad sleepers.. 22 

Recesses 238 

Reflectors of ribbed glass in 

cellar 225 

Revolver wall pocket 226 

Roads of turf 213 

Roads, ungullied 69 

Room plastered to peak 155 

Rooms for guests' attendants.. 122 
Rubber plugs in glass door 

frames 235 

Rustless iron work 310 

Safe, wall jewel 227 

Safety valve on kitchen boiler. 223 
Saxon bower room 222 



Saxon-thayne roofed and tim- 
bered hall 222 

Scraper, antique . 161 

Scraper formed from iron gate 

brace 311 

Secret alcove and niches for 

furniture 229 

Settles fitted with wire mesh.. 239 

Shakes, Colonial 313 

Shampoo fixture 231 

Shaving jog 231 

Shelves, hanging, of enameled 

steel 224 

Shingle weatherage of four and 

one-half inches 214 

Shoe shelf 228 

Shower jog 322 

Shower, outside 322 

Shut-offs for hot water heating 232 
Shut-offs in house plumbing... 232 
Shutter with crescent peep-eye 327 
Sills, marble, for bathroom 

( Appendix) 

Sills, marble, for entrance 161 

Sinks in kitchen and butler's 
pantry set six inches higher 

than usual 223 

Skating rink in garage 245 

Sleeping porches 228 

Spandreled arches 329 

Stain, non-odorous 327 

Stair, close string 326 

Stair curlicue 326 

Stair hall, second story, domed 

and doored 132 

Stair rail hand grip 216 

Stair rail, three feet six inches 326 

Stair rods 227 

Stair, steamer 121 

Stair window, sixteen feet 

square with concave glass.. 144 

Stairs enclosed 2 

Stairs side-settled 138 

Steps facing three ways. (Appendix) 

Stone-roofed outbuildings 314 

Storeroom vermin and tempera- 
ture-proof 224 

Stroll path 89 

Studio lighted by large and 

high north windows 197 

Sun bathroom with south win- 
dows and skylight 227 

Sun dial on exterior wall -with 

motto 208 

Telephones in each room. (Appendix) 

Telescopic house 200 

Terrace bank firmly held by 

honeysuckle planting 22 

Toggery closet 229 

Toilet, sanitary angle 231 

Tourelle, corbeled 213 

Trammels and crane 174 

Transoms (Appendix) 

Trap door to storage space 
above veranda (used in 
small house or bungalow) . 

Tree basket nest 139 

Tree house 63 

Trunk lift 155 

Turf roads 213 

Turf steps 239 

Turntable and pit in garaere.. 245 
Two-level house 174, 307 

Use of angle irons 321 

Vacuum cleaning pipes 238 

Veranda galleried rooms sepa- 
rate from house 134 

Veranda, open railed 273 

Wainscot without panels 241 



. LATCH STRINGS 365 

Wall niches in hall, stairs, and Windows, high in kitchen when 

gala rooms 238 latter overlooks front door 

Wall radiators 236 approach 215 

Wall treatment, decorative. .. . 241 Windows in nursery high and 

Waterfall, artificial 245 grilled 228 

Water pipe over range, to fill tea Windows in partition of inner 

kettle (Appendix) hall 216 

Weather strips, metal 302 Windows, north, of leaded yel- 

Weed killer for paths and roads 69 „. low opalescent glass.. ... 216 

Window fastenings, automatic. 216 Windows on dark stairs close 

Window screens, invisible 216 w . '° ceiling line 216 

Window screens' lowering into Wln f e Med bv S ' "28 

hnncs wall 21fi leased DJ spring _^8 

nous, wan -id Windows, Saxon squint-eye 221 

Windowed closets 295 WindowSj side gliding under 

Windows, box, upshding for aUic eaves instead of 

view panes 21b breaking roof contours with 

Windows, clear or leaded, de- dormers 129 

pending on view, centreing Windows with "up- step and side 

a chimney 110 settles for attic 234 

Windows, double, using leaded Workshop with forge and lathe 225 

light, hinged within 216 

Windows, Georgian 171 Yacht room 230 



ARBORETUM INDEX 



TREES, SHRUBS AND PLANTS 



Acuba Ash, var 

F rax in us 
Adam's Needle 

Yucca filamentosa 
Adder's Tongue 

Ophioglosswm vulgatum 

Agave, century plant, aloe 

Ailanthus, Paradise tree or tree 
of heaven 

Ailanthus glandulosa 
Alder leaved trailing chestnut.. 
Alder nigra 

Al nits fjlutinosa 
Alder (cut-leaf) 

Alnus glutiuosa laciniata im- 
perial is 
Algae, that realm which gamuts 
from a microscopic plant 
to 700 feet of kelp on a 

single stem 

Almond, flowering 

Amygdalus 
Althea, rose of Sharon 

Hibiscus syriacits 
Althea, variegated 

Hibiscus varicgata 
Alum root 

Heuchera americana 
Ampelopsis veitchii or Boston 



ivy 



Andromeda (stagger bush).. 
Anemone, Japanese 

Anemone japonic a 

Anemone, wind flower 

Aquilegia 

Aquilegia 

Aralia spinosa 

Arborvitae 

Biota clci/antissiina aurea. 

Biota oricutalis 

Biota occidentalis 

Arbutus, trailing 

Epigaea repens 
Arnica 

Arnica mollis 
Arrowhead 

Saggitaria 
Arrow-wood 

Viburnum dentatum 
Arrow-wood, downy-leaved . 

Viburnum pubescens 

Arundo donax var 

Aster, common blue wood... 

Aster cordifolius 
Aster, late purple 

Aster patens 



S7 
81 
97 
81 



59 
89 

89 



99 
102 

101 

87 
97 



78 
95 
96 

96 



94 

77 
95 
77 
77 
103 

97 

100 

103 

103 

87 
99 

99 



99 
99 

88 
87 



Aster, New England 

Aster novac-angliae 
Aster, sky-blue 

Aster asureus 
Astilbe, J apanese 

Astilbc japonica 
Azalea 

Azalea arborcscens 

Azalea mollis 77, 87, 94 

Baby's breath 97 

Gypsophila panic ulata 
Bachelor's button, corn flower, 

blue bottle 96 

Centaurea cyanus 
Balm of Gilead 97 

Populus candicans 
Balsam, wild, touch-me-not 96 

Impatiens 

Bambusa metake 87 

Barberry, Japanese 78, 87 

Bcrbcris japonica 
Basil, sweet, or thyme 97 

Ociuiuiu basilic it m 
Bayberry 97 

Myrica carolinensis 
Bay tree 62 

Magnolia virgiuiana 
Bearberry 97 

Arctostaphylos 
Beech 85 

Fagus fcrrugiuea 

Fagus sylvatica 

Fagus heterophylla, fern-leaf 

Fagus purpurea, River's 
Beggar ticks 98 

Bidens vulgata 
Bell flower 88 

Campanula 
Bergamot, wild 97 

Monarda fistulosa 
Bindweed 99 

Convolvulus sc pin m 
Birch 85, 86 

Bctula laciniata 

Bctula purpurea 

Betula lutea 57, 80 

Bitter-sweet 84, 89, 101 

Celastrus scandens 
Black alder 99 

Alnus vulgaris 
Black-eyed Susan 96 

Rudbeckia liirta 
Black walnut 89 

Juqlans nigra 
Bladder-nut 102 

Staphylia tripholia 



.IRBORE'JTM INDEX 



367 



Blazing star 97 

Liatris pycnostachya 
Bleeding heart 97 

Dicentra spectabilis 
Bloodroot 97 

Sanguinaria canadensis 
Bonesel 97 

Eupatoi iiim perfoliatum 
Boston ivy 78 

. tmpelopsis veitchii 
! 'i mncing be1 96 

Saponaria officinalis 
Bos 81 

Buxus sempervirens 
Bridal wreath 97 

Spirea van Houttei 
Buckeye 85 

. lesculus hippocastanum 
Buckthorn, sea 101 

Hippophae rhamnoides 
Bugbane 97 

Cinticifuga 
Bur reed 100 

Sparganium 
Burdock 98 

Arctium lafpa 
Burning bush or spindle tree.... 101 

Euonymous 
Butter-and-eggs 97 

Linaria vulgaris 
Buttercup 97 

Ranunculus 
Butternut 58 

Tuglans cineria 
Button wood, plane or sycamore. 84 

P la taints occidentalis 
Brake 100 

Pteris a (i nil ina 

Cactus, hardy 82 

Opuntia vulgaris 
Caladium esculentum (elephant's 

ear ) 79 

Callicarpa 101 

Callicarpa purpurea « 

Calycanthus (strawberry shrub) 82 

Calycanthus florid us 
Canada thistle IS 

Cirsium arvense 
Cancer root or squaw root 98 

Epifagus 

Canna (Indian shot) 95 

Caraway 97 

Carina carui 
Carrot, wild 89 

Daucus 

Catalpa (Indian bean) 101 

-Catalpa, umbrella-headed 101 

Catbrier 97 

Smilax 
Catnip or catmint 97 

Nepeta cataria 
Cat-tail flag 97 

Typa la la folia 



Cedar 84 

Cedrus atlantica glauca 85 

< edrus deodora 85 

Century plant 81 

. \gave americana 

( "ercis ( Judas tree > 87 

ChaiiK miile 96 

. tnthemis tinctoria 
Cherry, Japanese 86 

Cerasnus flora plena 
Cherry, wild Mack 80 

/'run us serotina 
Chestnut 59 

Castanea 
duckweed 97 

. llsine media 
Chinquapin 50 

Castanea pumila 
Chokeberry 99 

. Idenorhachis 

Chrysanthemum 102 

Cigar plant ( Mexican) 89 

Cuphea platycentra 
Cinquefi >il gg 

Potentilla canadensis 

Clematis Jackmanni 102 

Clematis paniculata grandiflora.. 78 

( lematis, Virgin's bower 84, 89 

Clethra ( white alder) or pepper 

hush 95 

Clethra alnifolia 
Cloudberry 95 

Rubus chamaemorus 

Colchicum 97 

Colic root or star grass 97 

Aletris farinosa 
Colorado blue spruce 95 

Picea kosteriana 
Coltsfoot 97 

7 ussilago far far, 1 
Columbine gg 

Aquilegia canadensis 
Colutea S2 

Colutea arborescens 
Cone-flower 7g 

Rudbeckia speciosa 

Conium (poison hemlock) 88 

Copper plum 101 

Pruuiis pissardi 
Coreopsis 102 

Coreopsis lanceolata 
Corn flag 88 

Gladiolus 
Corn Mower 96 

Centaures cyanus 

C< irnelian cherry 81 

Corpse plant or Indian plant 98 

Monotropa 

( 1 ismos 102 

Cow lily 100 

Vymphaea advena 



368 



ARBORETUM INDEX 



Cow parsnip 97 

Heracleum lanatum 
Cowslip 97 

Prim ula 
Crab apple 97 

Pyrus coronaria 
Cress, scurvy grass 99 

Barbarea verna 
Crocus 81 

Iris 
Crowfoot 97 

Ranunculus 
Currant, black 55 

Ribes americanum 
Currant, Indian, or coral-berry.. 81 

Symphoricarpus vulgaris 

Currant, red Ribes rubruin 
Currant, yellow 101 

Ribes aurcum 
Cypress 80, 86, 95, 103 

Taxodium distichum 

Daffy-down-dilly _ 96 

Narcissus pseudo-narcissus 
Dahlia 87 

Dahlia variabilis 
Daisy 96 

Chrysanthemum 

Daisy, Hessian field 96 

Daisy, Michaelmas 96 

Dandelion 96 

Taraxacum taraxacum 
Daphne 81 

Dap line mesereum 
Desmodium or tick-trefoil 82 

Desmodium 
Deutzia 101 

Deutzia creuata flora pleno 
Devil's bit or blazing star 97 

Chamaelirium luteum 

Dimorphantus 94 

Dock, radish-leaved 98 

Rum ex crisp us 
Dodder 99 

Cuscuta gronovii 
Dogbane 97 

Apocyuum audrosaeviifolium 
Dogwood, alternate-leaved. 84, 97, 99 

Cornus altcrnifolia 
Dogwood, red osier 84, 97, 99 

Cornus stolonifera 
Dogwood, red 77 

Cornus rubra 
Dogwood, variegated 87 

Cornus variegata 
Dragon-root or dragon arum. ... 98 

Arisaema dracontium 
Duckweed 97 

Lemua polyrhica 
Dutchman's pipe 22 

Aristolochia sipho 



Echeverias 
Cotyledon 



95 



Edelweiss 9o 

Lcontopodium leontopodium 
Eglantine or sweet brier 150 

Rosa rubiginosa 

Egyptian grains -82 

Egyptian lotus 99 

Elder, black 57 

Sambucus canadensis 
Elder, golden 101 

Sambucus aurea 
Elm, American 85, 86 

Ulmus amcricanus 80 

Elm, Camperdown 85 

Ulmus p end ula 
Elm, cork 85 

Ulmus raccmosa 
Empress tree 77 

Paulownia imperialis 
English walnut, hardy 59 

Juglans regia 
Erianthus ravennae or plumed 

grass 87 

Eulalia gracillima 87 

Eulalia japonica zebrina 87 

Euonymous radicans var 87 

Euonymous, strawberry tree, 

staff tree 87 

Everlasting 87 

Gnaphalium decurrens 

Fennel 97 

Foeniculum vulgar c 
Fern, maiden-bair 101 

Adiantum pedatum 
Fern, sweet 99 

Comptonia peregrina 
Fever-bush 97 

Lindera benzoin 
Fi" common 62 

Fiats carica 
Filbert 80 

Corylus 
Fir, Nordmann's 85, 101 

Abies nordmanniana 
Fire-weed 89 

Epilobium angustifolium 

Flagroot 97, 99 

Fleur-de-lis 81 

Iris germanica 
Forget-me-not 88 

Myosotis palustris 
Forsythia 81, 87 

Forsythia suspensa 

Forsy th ia -z 'a riga ta 

Forsythia virdissima 
Foxglove, downy false 88,92 

Dasystoma flava 
Fringe tree, common 97, 102 

Chionanthus virginica 

Gentian, fringed 97 

Centiana crineta 
Geranium 248 

Pelargonium 



ARBORETUM l.XDEX 



369 



Ginseng 88 

Panax quinque 'folium 
Gladiolus (iris) 88 

(i lad in I us 
Goatsbeard 97 

.1 ruin us aruncus 
Golden elder 101 

Sam b uc us a urea 
Golden glow 78 

Rudbeckia laciniata 
Golden oak 80 

Quercus aurea 
Golden-rod 102 

Sol id a go 
Goose grass 97 

Eleusine 
Grape, Niagara 55 

/ 'itis cordifolia 
Grass, eulalia 87 

Eulalia gracillima 
Grass, plume 87 

Erianthus ravennae 
Grass, ribbon 87 

1'lialaris arundiacea picta 
Groundsell bush 101 

Bacharis halini ifolia 
Guelder rose or snowball tree 81, 101 

Viburnum opuliis 
Gvmnocladus or Kentucky cof- 
fee 102 

Gymnocladus 

Harebell 88 

Campanula rolundifolia 
Hawthorn 102 

Crataegus 
Hazel 39, 80 

Corylus 
Hemlock 87 

Tsitga 
Hen and chickens 97 

Sempervivwm tee to rum 
Hercules' club 94, 103 

Aralia spinosa 

Hessian field daisy 96 

Hibiscus cooperii 62 

Hickory 38, SO 

Hicoria 
High bush Cranberry 

Viburnum opulus 
Hobblebush 89 

1 'iburiutm accrifoliiim 
Hogweed 97 

. Imbrosia artemisi'de folia 
Holly. English ' 82 

Ilex aquifolium 
Hollyhock 88 

. Ilthea rosea 
Honeysuckle, bush 82 

Diervilla diervilla 
Hop tree, gulden 101 

Ptelea aurea 
1 [orsechestnut 85 

. lesculus hippocastamttii 



Horse-mint 97 

Mentha longifolia 
Horse-radish ' 97, 99 

A asturtium armoracea 
Horse-tail 97 

Equisetum 
Hydrangea 78, 87, 94 

Hydrangea arborescens 

Hydrangea liortensis 

Hydrangea pauieulala 

Iceland moss 95 

Certaria islaudiea 
Ice plant 89 

M eseinhryautheinuin eryslallium 
Indian currant SI 

Symphoricarpus vulgaris 
Indian pipe or corpse plant 98 

Monotropa uniflora 

Indigo shrub 102 

Iris 99 

Iris, ( ierman 81 

Iris germanica 
Iris, Japanese 81, 88 

Iris kempferi 
Iris, Siberian 81 

Iris sibiriea 
Iris, Spanish 81 

Iris ibiriea 
Ivy, English 62 

Hedera helix 
Ivy, poison 98 

Toxicodendron 

Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Indian turnip 

or preacher 98 

Arisaema triphyllum 
Jacob's ladder 88 

Polcntoniiuii ceruleum 
Japan juniper (japonica) 95 

Juniperus aurea 95 

Juniperus hibcrnica 95 

Juniperus sabina 102 

Japan kerria 101 

Kerria japonica 
Japan quince 82 

Cydouia japonica 
Japanese umbrella pine 101 

Sciadopitys verticillata 
Jasmine or jessamine 88, 101 

Jasminum officinale 
Jewel weed 98 

Impatiens biflora 
Jimson weed or Jamestown weed 97 

Datura stramonium 
Joe-pye-weed, or purple thor- 
ough wort 99 

Eupatorium purpureum 
Jonquil 88 

A arcissus jonquilla 
Judas tree 87 

Cercis 

Cercis japoncia 



370 



ARBORETUM INDEX 



Juniper 95, 102 

Juniperus communis 
J it u i penis dcprcssa 

Kalmia 84 

Kalmia lot i folia 
Katsura 85 

Cercidiphyllum 
Kentucky coffee 102 

Gymnocladus 

Kerria japonica 77, 101 

Kerria variegata 87 

Kilmarnock willow 85 

Caprea pendula 
Knotweed 88 

Polygonum sicboldi 
Koelreuteria or varnish tree.... 102 

Keulreuteria paniculata 
Koster's Colorado blue spruce. . . 85 

Picea kosteriana 
Kudsu vine 62 

Dolichos japonica 

Kerria, (cochorus) 101 

Laburnum or golden chain 101 

Laburnum vulgare 

Laburnum, Scotch 101 

Laburnum alpiuum 

Ladies' slipper, pink 98 

Cypripediiim spectabile 

Ladies' slipner, yellow 98 

Cypripcdium pubcsccus 

Ladies' thumb 98 

Polygonum pcrsicaria 

Larch 102 

Larix 

Larkspur 88 

Delphinum 

Laurel, American 84 

Kalmia latifolia 

Laurel (lamb-kill) 84 

Leek, wild 88 

Allium tricoccum 

Leopard's bane 97 

Doronicum planta«cncum var. 
Lichens, those plant exponents of 
two in one, algae, a chlor- 
ophyll joined with a fun- 
gus non-chlorophyll 98 

Lilac, common 78, 80, 101 

Syringa vulgaris 

Lilac, Persian 82 

Syringa persica 

Lily, blackberry 88 

Belam canda 

Lily, day 88 

Hcmerocallis 

Lily, Japanese gold-banded 88 

Lilium auratum 

Lily of the valley. 88, 97 

Convallaria majalis 

Lilv. tiger 88 

Lilium tigrinum 



Lily, toad 88 

Tricytis Jiirta 

Lily, yellow day 99 

Liverwort 88 

Hepatica triloba 

Locust 57 

Robinia 

Locust, honey 94 

Gleditsia 

Loosestrife, spiked 88 

Lysimachia tcrrcstris 100 

Lotus, Egyptian 99 

Lunawort 88 

Mertensia 

Lupine 8S 

Lupin us 

Magnolia 101 

Magnolia acuminata 

Magnolia stcllata 77 

Mahonia 88 

Bcrberis aquifolium 

Maiden-hair tree or gingko 101 

Salisburia adiantifolia 

Mallow 99 

Malva sylvestris 

Mandrake, wild 88 

Podophyllum pcltatum 

Man-of-the-earth 98 

Ipomca pandurata 

Maple 79 

Acer 

Maole, purple 79 

Platanoidcs schwedleri 

Maple sugar, rock or hard 84 

Acer sacliarum 

Maple, tri-color bark 

Maple, Wier's cut-leaf 77 

iVicrii laciniatum 

Marjoram 97 

Origanum marjoram 

Marshmallow 99 

Althca officinalis 

Matrimony vine 97 

Lycium vulgare 

Meadow rue 96 

Thalictrum 

Michaelmas daisy 96 

Milkweed and butterfly weed 

89, 97, 99 
Asclchias 

Mint 99 

Mentha 

Meat eating plants 99 

Mock orange 102 

Philadelphia corouarius 

Moneywort 89 

Lysimachia purpurea 

Monkshood 88 

Aeonitum 

Moonflower . ._ 22 

I pome a maxima 



ARBORETUM INDEX 



371 



Morning glory, wild 99 

1 poinea 

Mosses 98 

Musses, asexual 21 

Moss pink 88 

Phlox subulata 
Mountain ash 80 

Sorbus 
Mulberry 80, 101 

Morus 
Mulberry, weeping 86 

Morns pendula 
Mullein 98 

/ 'erbascutn 
Mushroom, held 98 

. Igaricus campestris 

Xannyherry 97 

Viburnum lentago 
Narcissus, poet's 82, 88 

Narcissus I' Deficits 
Nettle 98 

Lamium 
Nettle tree 102 

Celtis occidentalis 
Xew Jersey tea or red root .... 102 

( eanothus americana 

Xiei itinna or tobacco 88 

Nordmann's fir 85, 101 

. Ibies nordmanniana 

Oak. golden 80, 101 

Quercus aurea 

Oak of Mamre 82 

Oak, scarlet 79 

Quercus coccinea 
Oak. white 85 

Quercus alba 

< Meander 62 

Nerium 

Oogamous plants 99 

Orange 101 

Citrus 

< 'range, osage 67 

Madura 

Ox-eye daisy 96 

Chrysanthemum leucanthemum 

1 'ampas grass 87 

Gynerium argentenum 
Pansy 88 

Viola tricolor 

Partridge berry 22 

Mitchella repens 

Paulownia imperialis 77, 94 

Pea, perennial 88 

I. at livens latifolius 
Peach _ 53 

Persica 
Pearl bush 101 

Exochorda grandiftora 
1'ennvroyal. American 97 

Hedeoma pulegioides 
Peony, tree 94 

Paeonia mmttau 87 



Pepper hush, sweet 82 

Clethra 

Peppermint 97 

Mentha piperita 
Phlox, garden 88 

Phlox decussata or paniculata 

Phlox subulata 88 

Pine, Austrian 103 

I'inus austriaca 
Pine, red 84 

Pin us resinosa 

Pine W'eymi null 85 

Pineapple 81, 

Pink 88 

Pianthus 
Pitcher plant, side saddle flower, 

huntsman's cup 99 

Sarracenia 
Plantain 97 

Plantago 
Plum, copper 101 

I'riuius pissardi 
Poison hemlock 88 

Conium 
Pi iisi m ivy 98 

Rhus toxicodendron 
Pokeweed 98 

Phytolacca 

Polygonum sachaliense 100 

Poplar, gold 85 

Populus van geertii 
Poplar, lombardy 81. 86 

Populus dilatata 
Ponlar, silver 80 

Populus alba 
Poplar monilifera or cotton- 

woi k1, aspen 86 

Poppy, Oriental 88 

Papaver somniferum opium 
Prickly pear, common 82 

Opuntia vulgaris 
Primrose, evening 88 

Oenothera biennis 

Prince's feather 98 

. 1 marautus cordalus 
Privet, California 78 

Ligustrum ovalifolium 

Privet varigata 87 

Primus Pissardi (copper plum) 101 

Pyrethrum 88 

Pyrethrum 

Quince. Japanese 101 

Cydonia japonica 

Ragged robin 97 

Lychnis flos-cuculi 
Ragweed 98 

. Imbrosia 

Ranuneulus 95 

Raspberry, purple flowering .... 14 

h' a bus odoratus 
Rattlesnake root 97 

Nabalus 



372 



ARBORETUM INDEX 



Red-hot poker plant, torch lily.. 82 

Tritoma 
Reed, plumed ravenna 87 

Erianthus ravennae 
Retinospera or Japan cedar . . 77, 95 
Rheumatism root 97 

Jeffcrsonia diphylla 
Rhododendron 87 

Rhododendron 
Rhubarb 97, 99 

Rheum 
Ribbon grass 87 

Phalaris picta 
Ricinus, palma christi, castor oil 

bean 95 

Rock cress 88 

Arab is 
Rose 78, 94 

Rosa 

Rosa rugosa 87 

Rose tree 94 

Rosemary willow 85 

Rosmariuifolia 
Rosin-weed, compass plant 98 

Silphium terebinthinaceum 
Rue 96 

Rut a 

Sage... 97 

Salvia 

St. Bruno's lily SS 

Anthericum 
St. John's wort 98 

Hypericum 
St. Peter's wort 98 

Ascyrum 
Sarsaparilla, wild 97 

Aralia nudicantis 
Sassafras 84, 97 

Sassafras officinale 
Saxifrage 95 

Saxifraga 
Scarlet lightning 97 

Lychnis calcedonica 
Scilla 88 

Scilla 
Scotch broom 89 

Cytisus scoparius 
Self-heal 97 

Prunella vulgaris 
Senna, wild 97 

Cassia marylandica 
Sensitive plant 89 

Mimosa pudica 
Shad bush _ 97 

Amelanchicr canadensis 
Sheepberry 97 

Viburnum lent ago 
Silk tree 102 

AVbizsia iulibrissin 
Silver fir, Fraser's 95 

Abies frascri 
Silver poplar SO 

Papains alba 



Silver thorns 102 

Elaeagnus longipes 
Sitfast ' 98 

Ranunculus repens 
Skull cap or mad dog skull cap 98 

Scutellaria 
Skunk cabbage 81, 97 

Symplocarpus 
Smartweed 97 

Polygonum peuusylz'auieum 

Smocks and tresses 98 

Snakeroot. white 97 

Eupatorium ageratoides 
Sneezeweed 88 

Helen in m 
Sneezewort, pearl 88 

Achillea ptarmica 
Snowball, Japanese 87, 103 

Viburnum plicatum 
Snowberry 81 

Symphoricarpus racemosus 
Snowdrop 81 

Galanthus 
Snow-in-Summer 88 

Co 'ast iu m tomentosum 

Sophora japonica 85 

Sorrel, sbeep, plant of the cen- 
turies, autumn color in 
summer 97 

Ritine.Y acetosella 
Spanish bayonet 81 

Yucca 
Spearmint 97 

Mentha spicata 
Spice bush 97 

Li nd era 
Spiderwort, blue 97 

Tradescantia virginiana 
Spikenard 97 

Aralia racemosa 
Spindle tree, wide-stemmed 101 

Euonyiuous alatits 
Spirea (meadow sweet) Quaker 

lady 57, 78 

Spirea 

Spirea, blue 88 

Spring beauty 96 

Claytonia 
Spruce, Colorado blue 95 

Picea kosteriana 
Spruce, Norway 86 

Picea cxeclsa 
Spruce, white or cat 95 

Picea alba 
Spurge 88 

Euphorbia 

Squaw-root 98 

Canopholis am eric ana 
Squirrel corn 97 

Dieentra canadensis 

Star grass 97 

Hypoxia 



ARBORI/1'IM ISDEX 



373 



Star nf Bethlehem 97 

Ornithogalum 
Stramonium or Jimson weed... 97 

Datura 
Strawberry bush 82 

Euonymous americanus 
Stuartia or American cammelia 102 

Stewartia 

Styrax japonica 82 

Sumach SO 

Rhus glabra 
Sumach, staghorn 65 

Rhus typhina 
Sun-dew. meat eater 99 

Drosera 
Sunflower 33 

1 Id iii ii th us 
Sweetbrier 150 

Rosa rubiginosa 
Sycamore or buttonwood 84 

Plat anus occidentalis 
Syringa 101 

I 'In In ilc I Hi us coronarius 

Tamarisk, India and Africa 10 

Tamaris, French 10, 101 

T uniar ix gallica 
Tansy 97 

Tanacetum 
Tarragon 8S 

. lrtimisia dracunculoides 
Taxodium distichum or decidu- 
ous Southern cypress 

80, 86, 103 

Thallophytic plants 99 

Thorn apple tree, common, or 

Jamestown weed 102 

Datura stramonium 
Thoroughwort 97 

Eupatorium 

Thunbergii berberis 78, 87 

Thyme 97 

Thymus 

Tigridia 88 

Toad lily 88 

Tricyrtus hirta nigra 

Toadstool 97 

Toothache tree 97 

Zanthoxylum americanum 
Torch lily 82 

Tritoma 
Trailing arbutus 103 

Epigea repens 
Tree of Heaven or Chinese 

sumach 88 

lilanthiis 
Trumpet creeper 102 

Tecomia radicans 
Tuberose 88 

Polianthes 

Tulip 22 

Tulip tree or whitewood 84 

Liriodendron tulipefera 



Tumbleweed 98 

. I ma ran i!i us graecizans 

Turtle-head 88 

c ketone glabra 

Umbrella pine, Japanese 101 

Sciadopitys verticillata 

Valerian, garden 97 

/ 'aleriana officinalis 

Varnish tree 102 

Koelreuteria 

Veronica, iron plant, speedwell. 88 

Vetch g^ 

/ iiia 

Viburnum or snowball 81 

Viburnum alnifolium (Hobble- 
bush moosewood 

Viburnum lantana (wayfaring 
tree) 

Viburnum tomentosum plicatum 

or Japan snowball 87, 105 

Victoria regia or Amazon water 

lily 09 

Vinca, periwinkle or myrtle.... 23 

Violet, meadow 95 

I 'inla obliqua 

Virginia creeper 98 

. Impelopsis 
Virgin's bovver 84, 89 

Clematis 

Wake robin, great dowered.... 97 

Trillium grandiflorum 

Walking ferns 100 

Walnut, black 58 

Jug la us nigra 
Wayfaring tree 89 

Viburnum lantana 
Weigela 78, 86 

Diervilla 

Weigela, var 87 

Weymouth pine 85 

Willow, pussy 26, 77, 78, 81 

Salix discolor 

Willow of Saint Helena 88 

\\ illow, rosemary 85 

Willow, weeping 81 

Salix Babylonica 
Winterberry, Virginia 89 

Ilex verticillata 
Wistaria, American 78, 102 

// istai ia magnifica 
Wistaria. Chinese 78. VM 

II is t aria sinensis 

Witch grass 87 

I'anieum capillar e 
Witch hazel 81, 97 

Hamamelis virginiana 
Witch hazel, Chinese, winter 

flowering 81 

Withe-rod 89 

Viburnum cassinoides 
Woodbine 98 

Psedera guinguefolia 



374 ARBORETUM INDEX 

Wood sorrel, yellow 88 Yew 95, 102 

Oxalis stricta nn ^ Taxus 

Wormwood 88, 97 Taxus aurea 95, 101 

Artemisia Yucca 81 

Xanthoceras sorbifolia 85 Yucca filamentosa 



INDEX 



Aberdeen-Angus polled cattle.. 17 

Abney Park 82 

Abraham's burial 83 

Abraham's oaks 8 - 

Abraham Lincoln 339 

Absent pennant 245 

Accentuate door, window, wain- 
scoting- and mantel, avoid 

the over :; ' 3 

Aches of old age, easing the... 97 

Acid flesh protection 92 

Accurate plans - s '' 

Acme of living 301 

Acoustics "18 

Acquaintance and effort 341 

Acreage J 

Adams, Samuel 217 

Addenda which assert 304 

Additions to cover money risks 297 

Ad infinitum world 193 

Adirondack pine forest 152 

Adirondacks at city's threshold 142 

Adobe dwelling 302 

Advantages of new worries >b 

Advantages that increase value 

of a country home 338 

Afterthought doors and win- 
dows expensive 311 

Agglomeration of building 

ideas 300 

Aggressive excrescences 13 

"Agin natur" novelties 78 

Agronomical efforts 15 

Ailanthus, odorous root spread- 

j J^ o* O o 

Air and sunshine tax 215 

Air castle. Alpine 234 

Air castles woven into reality.. 160 
Air-chamber cushions the hack- 
kick of quickly shut-off 

water 323 

Air check valve 235 

Air, confined, makes a warm 

blanket 308 

Air. deoxidized 223 

Air duct to cellar radiators.... 236 

Air lanes of migration 47 

Air-lifting brick chamber 223 

Air, nicotine-laden -' :; ] 

Air-spaced plastering 214 

Air spaces carry sound, but 

i be curbed with baffles. 308 

Air spacing 257 

Air, the great wood preservative 326 

Alarm gong under eaves 226 

Alcohol banished when ever- 
green roof-tree is nailed to 

the ridge 317 

A lcovc bed 227 

Alcove in breakfast bay 220 

Alcove. Moorish arched 

Alcove, oriel windowed I s:; 

Alcove, windowed 1 :; ^ 

Alden, John :; ' 

Alder leaf ca ■'-' 

Alembic of ideal housing 304 

Alfalfa or lUi owing. ... 73 

Algae from brook 193 

Algai 'i,i id the pool. . 99 

Alh < 243 

All the world copyists 30' 

All-the-year house . k 281 

Alphabetical names oT cows.... 61 



Alta Crest a human pyre 33] 

Altering the farm house 2 

Aluminum cooking utensils.... 222 
Amateurs "stomp" where angels 

fear to tread 309 

Ambition, misguided 287 

Ambry at either end 329 

Ambry made by building house 

wall inward a foot or more 311 

Ambush bug 91 

Amy of the Brighton road 26 

Amenable to reason 293 

American Indian room 228 

Am. 'ilea's only Giant's Causeway 153 

Amphitheatre 71 

Anaemic architecture 301 

Anchor chain, iron, for electro- 
lier 2S1 

Ancestral hall 218 

"And now his nose is thin".... 83 
"And the jessamine fair and the 

sweet tuberose" 88 

Andalusians, blue-blooded blue 31 

Andirons, brass 233 

Andirons crowned with cannon 

balls 179 

Andirons, Great Dane 173 

Angora Aurea 3, 27, 39 

Angora goats 31, 58 

Animal death hour 35 

Animal kingdom in fields 97 

Animal lawn mowers 242 

Animal life, minute 193 

Animal photographs 17 

Animal ploughshare 31 

Animal qualities 41 



Animal romances 

Annuals 

Ant 

Ant foster-mother 

Ant lion 

Ant slaves 

Anti-damp water-proof paint 
Ants and beetles, freebooting. 

Anywhere plants 

Apiiides. milch cow 

Aphidivorous gourmands 



!5 
TT 
94 
92 
91 
92 
214 
84 
78 
93 
93 

Apiarist 34 

Apogamy of plant life 99 

Apotheosis in American archi- 
tecture 

Apple blight 74 

Apple blossom dream 120 

Apple blossoms, unrivaled S7 

Apple borer 57 

Apple growing 59 

Apple maggot 93 

Apple of the future 51 

Apple orchard, scrawny 118 

Apple, pound seedling 37, 51 

Apple tree scraping 49 

Apple I ree scrubbing 4^ 

Apple tree spacing 49 

Apple tree vs. woodpecker 45 

Apple trees used as foil 118 

Apples, sweet 49 

i.it Ive customer 340 

A rabella 61 

Arabesque design 169 

Arable land 140 

Arbor seat and weeping mul- 
berry 86 



376 



INDEX 



Arboreal pearl oyster 45 

Arbored summer house 3^4 

Arboretum • 73 

Arboretum planting scheme and 

record ' ] 

Arboretum record book 96 

Arboretum, scope of 86 

Arbors -ll 

Arbors, arched 5o 

Arbre-arched foot gates 218 

Arbutus from Mt. Mansfield . . . 103 
Arbutus, the standard of fra- 
grance 103 

Arcadian living ° J 

Arch beneath stair 18 J 

Arch, first known 22 6 

Arch, iron 172 

Arch, Moorish, 15 feet wide.... 155 

Arch of uniform spring 189 

Arch, round-headed Roman.... 226 

Arch, single and double 226 

Arch substitute of the Incas... 226 

Arched gate to clothes yard... 239 

Arched under house 307 

Arches, framing for 293 

Arches of wood, except as 

decorative, are impracticable 310 
Archetype of the new house in 

plaster, wood, or cardboard 328 
Architect and builder experi- 
mentally inclined 330 

Architect and builder often non- 
Dlussed over the outcome of 

"the new house 328 

Architect, lapses of 240 

Architect, makeshift -89 

Architect, mood of 251 

Architect's advice and guid- 

cL Tl C G oUi 

Architect's bias for unbroken 

roof contours 330 

Architect's cash certificates.... 289 
Architect's conception tying 
hall, door, window, stair, 

fireplace 326 

Architect's dilemma 302 

Architect's fee 29- 

Architectural feast 214 

Architecture, aggressive 152 

Architecture, country 152 

Architecture, new American.... 213 

Architecture, semi-Oriental .... 157 

Architecture still sisterless 302 

Architecture transformed 78 

Architrave, entablature and 

column 303 

Archway 213, 214 

Area brick drained 144 

Areas, self-draining blind ditch 221 

Arid summers 245 

Arm of Sound dammed and 

water-gated 273 

Armoire 221 

Armor, ancient 173 

Armored knight stair guard... 173 

Armored knights 242 

Arrow, copper 241 

Arrow sawed from brass plate 274 

Art, the most valuable 339 

Artificial pool 245 

Artificial rapids and waterfall. 245 
Artificial reinforced stone in 

quoin, sill, and lintel 302 

Artistic solecism 243 

Asbestos i o b 

Asbestos and cement shingles.. 214 

Asbolt 218 

Ash flue 233 

Ash flue outlets must be 
guarded; our worst fire 
from an unguarded ash flue. 319 

Ash pit 233 

Ashing for yellows 55 



Asparagus 243 

Asparagus beetle 57 

Asparagus growing 340 

Asparagus, trade marks of 

freshness 340 

Asphalt expansion joints 310 

Assassin caught red-handed.... 100 

Asteria, yellow 94 

Astronomical chart, key to 228 

Attic lift 155 

Attic rooms 234 

Attic stair, unrailed 2 

Attic stair window 270 

Attic stairway closed 2 

Attic-stored heirlooms 62 

Attic studio 237 

Attic windows, north, south, 

east and west 274 

Aurelian calls 90 

Ausable Chasm, Jr 133 

Autographs 7 

Automobile necessary to the 

farmer 339 

Autopsy by veterinary 23 

Autumn-leaved varnish tree.... 102 

Avarium 90 

Avian tribe 47 

Aviary 295 

Aviary, unbarred 243 

Avoid buiding too close to road- 
way 330 

Avoid shutting off future road- 
ways and views 339 

Awkward halls changed to 
bayed and settled window 

nooks 326 

Awninged platform 239 

Awnings 234, 240 

Axe a staunch friend 120 

Axis and motif essential in 

house building 305 

Back-aired piping 323 

Back hall well hole 232 

Back lane 63 

Back log for a mill 296 

Back plastering 281 

Back stairs, a full flight in a 

good house 326 

Bacteria septic canks 13 

Baffle boards 277 

Bag-worm 53 

Balanced lift 194 

Balanced plant growth 94 

Balanced world 193 

Balancing lights and shadows in 

a room 325 

Balconies 226 

Balconies against chimney 281 

Balconies, canvas covered .. 115, 146 
Balconies carelessly constructed 330 

Balconies, leaking 115 

Balconies with steep pitch to 

door sill 315 

Balcony, hanging 146 

Balcony, musicians' 135 

Balcony, overhanging 183 

Balcony, projecting 146 

Balcony rooms 254 

Balcony, screened minstrels'.... 152 

Balcony sills sloped 115 

Baldwins 49 

Ball bearing casters 2 

Balloon construction with ledger 

board supports notched in 

studding 316 

Baltimore heater 3 

Baltimore oriole 39 

Baluster, carved Jacobean 326 

Baluster, Colonial 326 

Balusters 183 

Balustrade for coolness 320 



INDEX 



377 



Balustrade, hand carved 18! 

Balusl pade of metal ::_:<; 

Banishing the funnel stairway. iti 

Bank loans 340 

Banner shrub SI 

Banquet halls for bees 100 

Bantams 31 

Barbaric architecture 302 

Barbarity of wire barb 69 

l Barberries 55 

Bark abrasion, prevention of... 96 

Bark colored insects 93 

Bark-hidden lairs 57 

Bark slabs 257 

Barn, cattle 15 

Barn cupola 33 

I '.a in, hay 15 

Barn owl 4 5 

Barnum, P. T IT 

Barnyard refuse 9 

Baroness Burdett-Coutts 29 

Baronial house 142 

Barrel a long- hall ceiling. .322, 329 

Barreled ceiling 189 

Barrier wall 203 

Barriers head high, shutting off 

views of the country 335 

Barriers must harmonize with 

tlie new house 334 

Barriers of famous architects.. '■'.:'.■> 
Barrier riven criss-cross rail.. 335 
Barriers worth best thought... 335 

Bartlett pears 4 7 

Bas-relief, copper 169 

Bas-relief, stone 189 

Mas-reliefs, terra cotta 153 

1 !ase, corbeled 213 

Base plugs 237 

Base, sanitary 229, 282 

Base trim high to cover plugs.. 23"i 
I'.aseboard set on under floor... 235 

Basement above ground 194 

Basement bee-hive 225 

Basement calcimined and deco- 
rated 197 

Basement enameled and spar 

varnished 

Basement ground air-proof 155 

Basement lavatory with shower 331 

Basement rooms 224 

Basement, unhealthy 224 

Basement, wooden floored 224 

Basins, set 281 

Bastile lock 221 

Bath cabinet, electric 231 

Bath closet 230 

Bath, comfy of 230 

Bath houses 281 

Bath, Pompeiian 199 

Batli tub, enameled steel vs. 

solid porcelain 230 

Bath tub for children 231 

Bath tub railed in 230 

Hal li tub set in floor 230 

Bath tub six feet long 230 

Bath tubs 199 

Bathing beach, steps to serv- 
ants' 281 

Bathing houses 203 

I'-alliing in Sound at midnight.. 203 

Bathing pool 160 

Bathroom, barreled ceiling 231 

Bathroom fixtures, gold-plated. 231 
Bathroom fixtures, nickel plated 282 
Bathroom floored and walled 

with glass 1 55 

Bat h roi .ji i ha id ware, nickel 

plated 282 

Bathroom hardware to match 

plumbing 231 

Bathr I, salt water 194, 282 

Bathroom, sun 227 

Bathroom tiled to celling. .. 122, 316 



I tat hroom water heater 223 

Bathroom with canopy of elec- 

t lie lights 231 

Bathroom with fireplace ven- 

tilat ion 231 

Bathroom with low pore. -Iain 

Hush tank 236 

Bathroom with white glass sides 231 

Bathrooms 3 200, 230 

Bathrooms, furred down .' 316 

Batrachians 100 

1 !ats 45 

Bal ten board the site 327 

Battens with one side nailing.. 112 

Batteries, chemical 257 

Battle for independence, selec- 
tion important matter 340 

Battle royal 74 

Bayberries 57 

Bay trees r,j 

Hay window addition 158 

Bay window eighteen feet wide 189 

Bays and projections 227 

Bays at time of building are 
inexpensive and often a 
fifty per cent, improvement 327 

Beacons and reef-buoys 281 

Beams at side walls omitted 

for a cove 325 

Beams, cambered 281 

Beams, ebonized 184 

Beams, hewn 221 

Beams, large, give sturdy 
strength unknown in a cut 
up, costly, paneled ceiling.. 325 
Beams, plaster ribbed and deco- 
rated 325 

Beams reinforced by cement... 219 

Beams, roof framing 219 

Beams set to leave a larger 

centre 325 

Beams spaced to leave ceiling 

in shape for decoration.... 325 
Beams, veranda ceiling, 9-inch. 281 

Bean galls 93 

Beaver board with its limita- 
tions useful in the bunga- 
low realm 321 

Bed draperies 197 

Bed linen 97 

Bed steps 5 

Bedding, air-bathed 7 

Bedding plants 248 

Bedroom, outdoor balcony 270 

Bedrooms 197, 105 

Bedrooms, bunked 251 

Bedrooms, masters' 227 

Bedrooms, outdoor 7, 228 

Bedrooms, south and west 227 

Beds not to face a window 311 

Beds set north and south 311 

Bee-hive in attic window 34 

Bee life 84 

Beef and dairy types 17 

Bees 34 

Bees, particular 91 

Beetle hunting 93 

Beetle, long horned 93 

Beetle, water 93 

Beetle, whirligig 93 

Before the cellar is dug know 

your house 328 

Beggar ticks 98 

I Jellerica 1 .".7 

Belvedere 133, 208. 214 

Belvedere adds more than cost 312 
Belvedere overlooking maze.... I'll 
Berkshire contribution to house 154 

Berkshires 24 4 

Berries 35 

Berry-bearing plants 101 

Bess 26 



378 



IXDEX 



Best bibs and tuckers 97 

'Bestest kites, sleds and ponies" 28-1 

Best semi-bungalow 270 

Bethlehem of Judea 82 

"Bethumped with ideas" 301 

"Better fifty years of Europe". 75 
"Better late than never" good 

building ethics 296 

Beverly beans 221 

Bibliophile 219 

Bidet 231 

Bidders, responsible 2:_>2 

Biennials ' • 

Billiard hall 133 

Billiard room 122, 234, 24. 

Billiard room changed into an 

assassin 331 

Billiard room mantel 2 3 3 

Billiard room plastered to 

tower peak 155 

Billiard table on first floor 234 

Billiard table with immovable 

cement foundation 331 

Bills, labor 288 

Bins next to boiler 224 

Birch floors, red 234 

Birch, silver-sheened 80 

Birches, silver white < 

Birches vs. evergreens 21 , 

Bird and squirrel rendezvous.. 243 
Bird annihilation spells famine 35 

Bird appetites 35 

Bird, blue 39 

Bird booby 4o 

Bird bungalow •; 

Bird callers 4 ? 

Bird Captains of Industry .... 45 

Bird colony, home 101 

Bird death chamber ■ • ; ;. 

Bird flocks i: 

Bird fonts \\ 

Bird growth ;-;;' 

Bird homes •':, 

Bird life unfettered 243 

Bird lore 

Bird melodies 10- 

Bird menu ;;;' 

Bird nursery ■'■' 

Bird paradise 101 

Bird-proof tents f* 

Bird rendezvous - &" 

Bird restaurant, keyless and 

never closed 102 

Bird songs of freedom - . 

Bird species, nine hundred 35 

Bird temperaments 41 

Bird thievery •;•' 

Bird trolley ;;: 

Bird vs. infant development.... •■■• 

Birddom's varied qualities 41 

Bird's-eye maple 45 

Bird's-eye maple room --* 

Bird^ -4-, 

Birds, obliteration of 35 

Birds of the Orient -!•_ 

Birds, perpetual motion : 

Birds, singing 

Birds suet lunch counter ■*■> 

Birthright sold for pottage of 

the fields • • • ■ 58 

Bizarre, incomplete and uncom- 

fortable house building field 300 

Black birch. aromatiJ 57 

Bl , 57 

Black eagles 2'' 

Black knot ' ] 

Black monarch ■_ j 

Black rot 

Black streak of roadway im- 
prisoned between high wall 

Black Tartarians • " 

Black walnuts . . 5., 58 

Blackberries, running 



Blackberry patch, six-acre.... ".7 
BiacKDerry, semi-thornless .... 55 

Blackberry vines 63 

Blackbird, red-winged c.a 

Blankets saturated with water 

for fire protection 331 

Blazing for cutting 84 

Blind drain 113 

Blind, Venetian, the mainstay, 

but ariven to wind-swaying 327 

Blind wells 305 

Blinds clash with oriel case- 
ments, embrasured English 
window.?, and mullioned trip- 
lets 327 

Blinds inanimates to grapple 

with 304 

Blinds, pent-roof, hinged centre 
joint, roll up in pocket 
blind, sliding blind, full- 
slatted whole, half, or cut- 
in-centre blind 327 

Blizzard of 1888 43 

Block and tackle failure 155 

Block chocking 251 

Blot and smear a garden of 

Eden 301 

Blue blood tree 80 

Blue envelope 214 

Blue jay, strident voiced 41 

Blue Ribbon Seven 85 

Bluffs of Long Island 134 

Boat centreing lawn 282 

Boat davits 207 

Boat, fiat bottom, yawl-rigged 282 

Boat lockers 281 

Boat racks 194 

Boat repertoire 265 

Boat ways 207 

Boats, wavs, and spiles 208 

Bob White 35 

Bobbie Burns 23, 25 

Bobolink, reed, rice bird or 

skunk blackbird 41 

Bob-o-Linkon 41 

Bodlime 74 

Bogland 99 

Bogless farm 99 

Boiler hung from ceiling 281 

Boiler room 154. 194 

Boilers having additional sec- 
tions 323 

Boiling spring stoppered in 

rock-quarried excavation... 30. 

Bombastic humans \' :) 

Bond incentive 28* 

Bonding the contractor 288 

Bone-chilling surprise 226 

Bone-dry house 213 

Bone yard of terra cotta factory 24 4 

Bonfire every day 293 

Bonus, offering of 288 

Book and microscope 41 

Bookcase under stair 22^ 

Bookcases 183 

Book-mark motif 183 

Bookmarks 215 

Bookshelf, novel 219 

Bookshelves • * 

Bordeaux mixture 55, 57 

Borders of box 81 

Borders of Enaiish [vy 243 

Borer 

Bosc. beurre |3 

Bosky cover 8r» 

Boston hip and ridge 313 

Boston shingle ridge 61 

Boston sparrow scourge 

Boston Town 221 

Botanical catapault 81 

Botanical names lJ>o 

"Roudoir a bedroom 329 

Boudoir grilled and columned.. 



INDEX 



379 



Boudoir stairs 221 

Boudoir suites, south, east and 

west 13S, 220 

Bouldered entrance posts 113 

Bouldered posts cheapened 113 

Bouldered stone wall 152 

Bourgeois chicken hawk 212 

J :<>\\ gun 140 

Bower of beauty, an exotic 

entrance 312 

Bowling alley, glass 225 

Bowling a'.lev shielded bv ver- 
anda 225 

Bowling alley under veranda... 203 

Box stall 26 

Box window view panes 110 

Eoxes, metal lined 239 
oy's cabin 61 

Bin's paradise 230 

Brace up sills as well as cour- 
age 338 

330 



parti- 



Bracing and supportin 

tions 

Bracing, scant 289 

Bracken growth 100 

Bracket supports covered with 
galvanized 'Aire coated with 

cement 310 

Brackets, mosaic gold 122 

Brackets, ship-kneed 277 

Brackets, side, electricallv 

tipped 281 

Brain builder and saver 74 

"Brain room of the world" 7 

Brass for table tops 242 

Brass piping 223 

Brass piping under laundry 
tubs good, but raises the 

cupidity of the tramp 

Breakfast room, east 212 

Breakfast room, outdoor 130 

Breakneck Hill 63 

Breastplate 132 

Breeding stuck in poultry 

Breezemont 138 

Brewing de ■•■• tions 97 

Bric-a-brac 135 

Brick bay a dirt-collecting 

angle 214 

Brick, soft, deterioration under- 
ground 307 

Brick, hollow 142 

Brick laid in freezing weather 
must be in cement mortar. 
but if jarred immediately 

loosens 308 

Brick laid in warm weather 

must be wet 308 

Brick laying- in zero weather. . 290 

Brick mantel 2.14 

Brick mocks at powers before 

which stone and steel grovel 302 
Brick, mud of commerce, a 

water absorber 309 

Brick oven 

Brick partition 

Brick, piano-wire-machine made 

Brick i rock-faced) collects dust 

and is easily marred, but 

obviates stains from window 

drippings 

Brick, s 214 

Brick, soft 291 

Brick. Boun.re. rougrh cast for 

inc' ing 

Brick tied hollow tile '"'• 

Brick, v faci 

Brick, veneered, air-soaced 142 

Brick. • ofing 

colorless solution removes 
the one objection Vj brick 

construction 

Brick windowed shaft 



Bricks too soft for chimneys.... 290 
Bridging not nailed to floor 
ueams until just before 

plastering 316 

Briercliff riveted to ledge 133 

Briers vs. flowers ■"•"' 

Brinkles orange raspberry 47 

Bronze grilled lantern-centred 

gateway 335 

Brooders 33 

Brook, pebbly-bedded 17 

I Crook plants :»9 

Brook, utilization of 11 

Brown frog of the woods more 

woodsy still 100 

Brown thrasher 35 

Brush fire 61, 103, 331 

Buena Vista 115 

Buenos Aires 215 

Buerres 53 

Bugs and Butterflies 90 

Builder, amateur 294 

Builder not always to blame... 292 

Builder, practical - 

Builders' bond 283 

Builders' duty regarding ground 

air 213 

Builders, ble 289 

Builders' truck horse cement... 213 

Building a mansion 2.1 

Building a rasping menace 291 

Building and planting tightly 

hand-clasped 157 

Building at lower level, objec- 
tions to 330 

Building contingencies 289 

Building dilemmas 289, 291 

Building dragons 288 

Building fundamentals 23C 

Building hastened with material 

stacked to half-story height 306 

Building hints to amateur 284 

Building honeycombed with 

ors 242 

Building laws 215, 289 

Building' mania, symptoms of.. 2,4 

Building-, method of 291 

Building of mansion 291 

Building, old way of 13 

Building on percentage basis.. 294 
Building on wrong- side of 

a venue or street 2^ . 

Building- optimists 291 

Building reduced to plain math- 

i tics 

Building- rules, four 288 

Building sites 212. , . 

Building sites more important 

ii Vour makeshift house. 338 

Building; to fit the site 132 

Building up a congenial neigh- 
borly neighborhood :: ' l 

Building' vs. cotton and corn.. 295 
Building without change impos- 
sible 291 

BuiU-in drawers 234 

Bulkhead of wired glass 113, 114 

Bull's eyes, antique 221 

Bumble bee burrow 94 

Bumo-on-a-log stage of the 

world 242 

neralow and two acres may 

n freedom 

Runet'cw a1 e.osl of $900 27ft 

insralow building to enliven 
the nronerty, but go slowly "4 1 

Bungalow fever 251 

neralow for every day in year 257 

Bungalow, idea i 274 

Bungalow motifs 254 

era low, shack 251 

Runeralow, stone 274 

Bungalow, two story 



380 



INDEX 



Bungalow vs. mansion 211 

Bungalows, expensive, death 

knell of 257 

Bungalows from Bengal 2 51 

Bungalows plastered, papered, 
decorated, heated and 

plumbed 257 

Bungalows, windmill construc- 
tion 257 

Bungalows with swinging barn 

doors 251 

Burden-bearer, undeveloped . . . 238 

Burdett-Coutts, Baroness 29 

Burglar alarm 226 

Burglar, bug and rodent phased 2 25 

Burglar checkmated 226 

Burglar - proof filing room 
boiler lined and electrically 

protected 303 

Burlap, new treatment of 241 

Burned by winter sun 62 

Burning inflammable debris.... 297 

Burning of the Cot 331 

Burnings over 113 

Burnt wood design 233 

Bursts of melody divine 102 

Business office 220 

Butcher bird 45 

Butler's pantry 144 

Butt, double action 235 

Butter mold imprints 5 

Butterfly flocks southward 

bound 94 

Butternuts 58 

Buttonwood reclothed 84 

Buttress hollowed for plants... 214 

Buttresses 213 

Buttresses improve a stone wall 309 

Buy if an ideal site 301 

Buy the landscape gardener's 
advice and then — improve 

on it if you can 339 

Buying the farm 340 

"By that sin fell the angels"... 287 

Byzantine architecture 212 

Cabinet closet six feet high.... 277 

Cabinet for cut glass Appendix 

Cabinets, leaded glass 233 

Cable system, electric 236 

Caddis worm 94 

Calendar, floral 212 

Calking- crevices 338 

Call of the land 342 

Calyx 79 

Cambered beams 325 

Camel usurper 100 

Camera plates 229 

Camera shots 90 

Campanile 213 

Camping atmosphere 2 57 

Canada thistle, throttling- of . . . . 74 

Canal boat, beaching- of 282 

Cancer rot 84 

Candlemas weather prophet.... 22 

Cane girdle r 57 

Canker worm 91, 93 

Canna, semi-hardy 95 

Cannas, unblanketed 95 

Cantilever and under brace.... 316 
Canvas and paper of unservice- 
able quality has canceled 

many a tile contract 314 

Canvas covering on balconies 

fastened with copper tacks 320 
Canvas paint-soaked for roofs.. 314 
Canvas roofs, cracking- pre- 
vented 315 

Canvas-walled shelters 251 

Capillary attraction 214 

Capital of $2,000 and income 

from $1,500 to $3,000 per yr. 340 

Capping, molded 241 



Captain Kidd's anchor 277 

Captain Kidd's shore lair 277 

Caravel Santa Maria 312 

Carbonized vegetation 

Carelessness often results in 

the wrong stain or paint on 

new wood 326 

Cares of husbandry 58 

Caretaker for country house... 341 

Carload lot, saving on 292 

Carpenter's bench 63 

Carpenter's labor contract 292 

Carpet of blossoms 150 

Carriage sweep 213 

Carrier pigeon 33 

Cartage allowance 2'.i2 

Carting away habit 293 

Caryatides 173 

Casement, embrasured Georgian 169 

Casement, swinging 277 

Casements 215 

Casements thoroughly rabbeted 215 
Cast iron boilers less liable to 

form scale 324 

Casts, plaster, tinted 23? 

Cat epitaph 2 7 

Cat who never zig-zaggea 27 

Catacombs 93 

Catbird aliases 39 

Catbriers 63 

Catch-all shed 59 

Caterpillar, hairy 91 

Caterpillar nests 90 

Caterpillar, sphinx 93 

Caterpillar, spiny-haired 91 

Caterpillar, tent 55 

Caterpillar, woolly bear 91 

Catkin 79 

Cats 15 

Catskill house, view from 159 

Cattle, Aberdeen-Angus polled.. IT 

Cattle, Ayrshire 17 

Cattle, red-polled 17 

Cattle, roving 243 

Cattle, short-horned 17 

Cattle trough, brick, cement 

lined 59 

Cattle troughs, porcelain 59 

"Cavalier and ladye faire".... -'IN 

"Cave Canem" 2 5S 

Cave of Macphelah 83 

Caves 133 

Cedar apple 49 

Cedar bough protection 85 

Cedar closet 228 

Cedar, enemy of apple 49 

Cedar, freshly cut 228 

Cedar, old 261 

Cedar-railed staircase 222 

Cedar wind screen 49 

Cedar, 250 years old 160 

Cedars, salt-defying 204 

Ceiling, beamed 220, 325 

Ceiling beamed to ridge 237 

Ceiling beams, cambered 189 

Ceiling- beams cost less and look 

better if large 325 

Ceiling beams over plaster 317 

Ceiling beams vs. window and 

door openings 329 

Ceiling-hung ladder 247 

Ceiling, indestructible cement.. 115 

Ceiling, iridescent 241 

Ceiling, metal 222 

Ceiling, plaster effects molded in 296 

Ceiling, segmented 189 

Ceiling thirteen feet high 142 

Ceiling verdure-embowered .... 115 

Ceilings 240 

Ceilings, coved 293,295 

Ceilings covered with canvas or 

burlap lessen danger of 
falling plaster 329 



IXDEX 



381 



Pellar 303 

Ceilings, groined 218 

Cellar ceiling 224 

Cellar corners concave 224 

Cellar floor drained to water- 
sealed manhole '-'- 1 

< iellar metal ash barrel 223 

Cellar metal dust box 238 

Cellar, miasmatic 7 

Cellar, pokehole 150 

Cellar preserve closet 224 

Cellar springs and water courses 

can be mastered 307 

Cellar tarred, grouted and 

cemented 9, 144, 224 

Cellar underdraining 307 

Cellar ventilation 225 

Cellar windows large 225 

Cellar woodwork enameled 225 

Cement 142, 212, 213 

Cement belting shadows and 

lowers a house 313 

Cement cored with galvanized 

quarter-inch mesh wire ... 214 
Cement crandaled surface for 

secure footing- 310 

Cement crisscrossed with nails. 233 
Cement curbing edged with 

metal corner bead 311 

Cement curbing- in time nicked 

and cracked 311 

Cement difficult to change or 

rebuild 302 

Cement discoloration and ab- 
sorption of moisture 3150 

Cement expansion and contrac- 
tion 310 

Cement-filled cavities 84 

Cement floor and wall inset with 
wire screening bars rodent 

and bug- 310 

Cement grouting mixed with 

ashes _ 5 ! 

Cement gutter at wall footing 

line (Appendix) 

Cement house number inset and 
in public buildings the 

name 311 

Cement, marble dust 214 

Cement mixing, a little salt and 
lime allows its use in cold 

weather 322 

Cement mixture for deadening. 281 
Cement, need of metal weather 

strips 3(12 

Cement, rubble 254 

Cement, scaling 310 

Cement stepping- stones 71 

Cement steps 132 

Cement steps, nicking is delayed 

if edges are rounded 309 

Cement tanks 11 

Cement, the just right mixture 

essential 330 

Cement, three coat work Ifil 

Cement walks set below frost 

line 310 

Cement walks with convex sur- 
face 310 

Cement waterproofed by mixing 
crude oil in the mortar for 

use in damp ground 322 

Cement, work, thr se coal 281 

Cementing a cellar 309 

Cemetery on farm 9 

Cesspools 11, 13 

Chain of verde-antique. . . 237 

Cha ir rail r> 

Chalice of nectar 91 

Chandlery, second-hind 244 

Changes in furniture, radiators 

..I- electric fixt ures 329 

Changes made ever signature.. 288 



Changes, minor 288 

Changes must he made 295 

Cha renal Alter 9 

Charles River 247 

Chauffeur's quarters 245 

i Jheating the sour microbe 2 

Chemical fire extinguishers 331 

Chemical tanks on wheels 332 

Cheops, architect or builder of. 219 

Cherries 35, 55 

Cherry Lane 55 

Cherry planting r >7 

Cherry tree, wild 55 

Chester 2 6 

Chestnut 65 

Chestnut, alder leaf trailing.... 59 
Chestnut apt to lie wormy, 

creosote a remedy 306 

Chestnut disease 58 

Chickadee optimist 43 

Chicken coop graperies 249 

Chicken farming 31 

Chicken hawk, bourgeois 212 

Chicken houses on skids 31 

Chicken runs 3 3 

Chicken, stolen 27 

Chiffoniers with false backs. 228, 229 
Childhood, glamored hours of. . 2S4 

Children's playhouse 138 

Children's playroom 228 

Children's sand pile 61 

Chimney breast air-spaced to 

prevent dam'pness 319 

Chimney breast cemented 5 

Chimney breast, white enameled 

brick 223 

Chimney - centred leaded win- 
dow no 

Chimney-centred view pane... 110 

Chimney contours 319 

Chimney corner 218 

Chimney design must not clash 

with roof line 319 

Chimney fan, electric 193 

Chimney, fire flues tile-lined 

and collar joints plastered. 318 

Chimney fiat stone-capped 7 

Chimney flues with iron throats 

and dampers 319 

Chimney forcing the air up- 
ward 320 

Chimney formerly the louvre, 
or roof opening, its substi- 
tute 318 

Chimney foundation to bed 
rock, hard-pan or rubble 

foundation 319 

Chimney jog- 229 

Chimney of Tiffany house 232 

Chimney, built plainly and 

strongly 305 

Chimney, scaling, of cement, a 
blot on the landscape and 

builder's escutcheon 318 

Chimney split in two at and 

above ridge 234 

Chimney swallows 45 

Chimney, the roof-tree's crown- 
ing glory 318 

Chimney, triangular 232 

Chimney, two fitted 281 

Chimney ventilation 146 

Chimneys built above the ridge 
with cut. broken ashler or 
rubble stone need especial 

care in flashing 318 

Chimneys combined with stone 

or terra COtta satisfactory.. 318 

Chimneys, clustered 311 

< 'iiim neys dra w besl wit h round 
tile lining rather than 
square 318 



382 



INDEX 



Chimneys with eight-inch wall, 
or, better, two four-inch, 
iron-tied, separated by two- 
inch air space 318 

Chimneys, fattening- the slim 

spindle 318 

Chimneys, grouped or stacked 318 

Chimneys as heat wasters 320 

Chimneys of both cement and 
brick show lime efflores- 
ence, especially in the 

spring 318 

Chimneys of lichen-covered 

stone 105 

Chimneys pointed up with gray, 
red. black or white mortar 
and having raked out joints 319 

Chimneys improve a house 318 

Chimneys, twin 146 

Chimneys, valleys and balconies 

„ leak 303 

Chinese room 228 

Chinquepin 58 

Chipmunk racing ground 15 

Chips and shavings burned 

each day 293 

Chorister months 47 

Chorister pages in Nature's 

book 47 

Christmas "bayberrie dyppe" ! ! 57 
Chubby, fibrous-rooted plants.. 80 

Cicadas o | 

filler orgy . . 63 

Ciderless farm 63 

Circumventing the fire fiend.... 214 

Circus siren calliope 99 

Cistern, brick, in cellar....!!!! 7 

Citadels of refuge 22 

City greenhorn 74 

City Hall with wooden studded 

partitions 304 

City home plus a country home 341 
City tree asphalt-covered roots 79 

Clamping post 251 

Clapboards abutting against 

corner board 129 

Clapboards, mitred 129 

Clapboards wrong side out 140 

Clapp's Favorite 53 

Clark telescope 234 

Classic grafted on the Colonial 300 
Classic head over front door. . . 161 

Clayey sub-soils 73 

Cleanout pockets 222 

Cleanouts with accessible hand 

and manholes 322 

Clear water vs. sewage 208 

Clearing and a virgin soil 301 

Clearing grown wild tree 86 

Cleft-in-the-rock tree 85 

Cleft, rocky, edging shore 277 

Cleopatra 218 

Clerestory lookout 226. 234 

Cliff dwellers' garments 81 

Cliff dwellers' stone fortress 

retreat l".i!i 

Cliff dwelling 1 

Cliff Eyrie galleried 258 

Cliff footpath 71 

Cliff, jettied 245 

Cliffed ravine 239 

Cliffmont 138 

Cliffs, storm-beaten 252 

Cliffside gallery 71 

Climatic topography 301 

Climber and trailer 69 

Cloaca Maxima arch 226 

Close valley shingling neater, 
stops leaks, but curtails life 

of shingles 314 

Closet, boxed-in 183 

Closet, housekeeping 224 

Closet, laundry 229 



Closet, linen, with two full size 

doors 122 

Closet locations .!!.!! 329 

Closet, porch room \ 229 

Closet, secret 228 

Closet, stolen \\\ 277 

Closeting a bedroom without 

decreasing its area 277 

Closets and bays good safety 
valves for ugly box-like 

rooms 324 

Closets behind panels 228 

Closets, cedar 228 

Closets each side of alcove 227 

Closets, eave 229 

Closets electrically lighted .... 229 

Closets in chimney jogs 228 

Closets insect-proof 229 

Closets, large 122 

Closets painted and spar var- 
nished 229 

Closets partially inset in parti- 
tions 231 

Closets, windowed 295 

Closets with drawers and par- 
titions 228 

Closets with sanitary floor and 

base 229 

Closing farm chapter 73 

Clothes chute, aluminum ... 199, 229 

Clothes yard pergolad 239 

Cloudland 211 

Clump-separating 79 

Clutch of day old chicks 31 

Coachman, shivering 244 

Coachman's room 124 

Coal bins, brick partitioned.... 224 
Coal bins with automatic chute 

delivery 224 

Coal delivery 224 

Coal discovered in the 16th and 
17th century, then the era 
of grate, stove and furnace 

dawned 319 

Coal efficiency lessened when 
heating flues hug exterior 

walls too closely 319 

Coal room 281 

Coal saving 232 

Coat of arms in stair oriel 

window 183 

Coat room 109 

Cochins 31 

Cocoon 89 

Coddling moth, predatory 74 

Cog, important in kitchen mech- 
anics 2 

Coign of vantage in garden.... 244 

Coins 7 

Cold frames • 248 

Cold graperies 154 

Cold grapery borders 249 

Cold storage room 223, 281 

Coli, elusive 19 

Colonels S 

Colonial and coeval English 
Georgian in combination 

with Queen Anne 300 

Colonial curlicues on the out- 
side of each step 326 

Colonial garden 81,243 

Colonial one-room cottage with 

garden on roof 315 

Colonnade 218 

Color decoration 240 

Color harmony 240 

Color keynote 219 

Color matching important 327 

Colt protection 69 

Columned and architraved 

exterior 212 



INDEX 



383 



Columns, architrave and coat of 
arms framing a door be- 
speaking welcome 311 

Columns, cement -14 

Columns inset with ornaments. 218 
Columns, Ionic capped ....144, 193 

t 'ill iimns. 2 4 -inch diameter 113 

t'omma butterfly 94 

Commission merchant's charges 49 

Comfort, ideal 234 

Commonizing hair cloth sofa... 251 

Common sense hygiene 213 

Common sense in building- best 

guiding rudder 330 

Commutation, interest, repairs, 
insurance and improve- 
ments 341 

Compass points considered in 

planning- 304 

Compassing the fourth compass 

point 135 

Compressed air tanks 9 

' 'on cent ra1 Ion 34 

Concord grape success 51. 55 

Concord stoves 217 

Concrete ford 71 

Concrete mixture 309 

Concrete platform outlasts wood 321 

Condemned yacht 2S2 

Cone-shaped hats 51 

Conflict with canons of good 

taste 301 

Coniferous tree eater 39 

Connecticut as a bird field 35 

Connecticut as a plant field.... 35 

Connecticut Capri 201 

Connecticut Continental 261 

Connecticut stony pasture land 152 

Conning- tower 226 

Conninsr tower of a Norman 

castle 335 

Conservatory 121, 154. 295 

Conservatory doors of plate 

glass 154 

Conservatory, double decker. . . 133 

Conservatory, fountained 193 

Conservatory, second story. 295, 32ft 

Conservatory, steel arched 247 

« 'onservatory. U-bar 247 

Conservatory, white tiled . .. 219 
Conservatory, wooden roofed... 193 

Construction details 306 

Construction shed filled with 

cement, brick and lime.... 306 

Contract, breaking of 291 

Contract claims 290 

Contract, heatina,- 292 

Contract, labor ... 292 

Contract of manager cancelled. 292 

Contract, restudyine: of °9fi 

Contract, restudying of 296 

Contract system, special 282 

Contract, written ratification of 288 
Contracting power of metal... 302 

Contractor, bonding of 288 

Contractor, honest, promises of 280 

Contractor, individual 295 

Contractor in your debt 291 

Contractors' excuses 290 

Contractors, irresponsible 289 

Contractors, weak-kneed 289 

Contracts, electric wiring .... 294 

Contracts, heatina 294 

Contracts, one-sided 292 

Contracts, plumbing 294 

Control of tide levels 208 

Convex copper hood 233 

Cooking galley . .282, 2 51 

Cooking table on casters 2 

Cooking table with soapstone 

top 2 2 2 

Copper 213 

Copper boiler advantages 223 



Copper bronzing walls and ceil- 
ing 2 11 

Copper, disintegration of 282 

Copper flashing under and over 

windows and oxi balconies.. 315 
Copper gutters as lightning rods 318 

Copper house in the west 303 

Copper in roof and boiler and 

brass pipes tempt thieves.. 314 
Copper paint and rusty nails... 208 

Copper plant labels 95 

Copper roofs, ridge seamed 314 

Copper sulphate 55 

Copperas disinfectant 11 

Copyist of past generations.... 302 

Cordon-grown trees 53 

Cork flooring eases feet of cook 
and takes the chill and slip 
out of a bathroom floor... 317 

Cork rugs and runners 85 

Corn and hay fields 140 

Corn and potato fields vs. land 

values as land 337 

Corn raising- for silo 101 

Corner beads. acorn tipped. 

relegated to the past 321 

Corner cove and ceiling cove.. 329 
Corner-stone of accomplishment 219 

Cornering elusive time 297 

Corolla 79 

Corpse plant 98 

Corraling- the sun all day 304 

Corridor-like room 

Corridor of palms, one story... 296 

Corridor, palm-decorated 105 

Corridor, second story beamed.. 193 
Corridors arched and pillared.. 225 
Cost, approximate adjustment of 289 
Cost as elastic as requirements 

of vacillating owner 294 

Cost, method of figuring 294 

Cost of building increased 294 

Cost of house doubled 292 

Cost of house, maximum 293 

Cost of labor two or three times 

that of material 294 

Cost of new house, counting... 287 

Cost of plastering per yd 292 

Cost, ten to twentv cents cu. ft. 294 

Cost. {3 to $8 sq. ft. area 294 

Cosy corner divaned and draped 122 

Cot. The 61 

Cottage of 100 years ago 251 

Cottage, one story 251 

Cottage, rose porched 217 

Couches in pairs 227 

Counting house efforts 96 

Country house craze 299 

Countrv life underlying all 

realms ■••••;•• ?on 

Country living, difficulties of. . 1-0 
Country living, joy and Utilitj 

of „ o n 

Country living, lure of -»• 

Country villas J i 

County fair . ' „ 

court-yard centre • . ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ - 10 

Cowl -capped, zinc - swiveled 

chimney pot ■ * 

Cows alphabetically named.... 61 

Crab apple .\ 

Crag and boulder 'J- 

Crags •••■ ■•■■ *61 

Crane l '-• -- '• 

Crane fly •)* 

Crane inset when building is an 

advantage 318 

Crater garden lo 

Crepuscular goatsucker *«> 

Crippling . . ivs 

Crippling, extra aid in hanging 

heavy pictures 310 



384 



INDEX 



Crippling- is best cross-herring- 

boned 315 

Criticism of architect 129 

Croftleigh 134 

Cromlech stone 129, 150 

Crop succession 74 

Crops, triple 73 

Crossways 273 

Crotchets of comfort not always 

expensive : 295 

Croton, giant 87 

Crow 43 

Crow nest 138 

Crow walks 55 

Crow's nest in hemlocks 134 

Crude beginning- and mature 

development 157 

Cuckoo, nest-stealing- 37, 47 

Cuckoo, parasitical 45 

Cuckoo type of man 47 

Cuckoos of insect tribe 91 

Cuirass 218 

Cupboards, urn-crowned 5 

Cup-shaped tulip tree 84 

Curbing- 213 

Curculio 53, 93 

Currants, black, white, red 55 

Current short circuited 237 

Curtailment and addition of 

help 297 

Curtain, metal, for bookcases.. 219 
Curving lines often a luxury.. 327 
Cut nails prolong life of a roof 313 

Cut stone 214 

Cut worm 93 

Cuthbert raspberry 47 

Cutting for plumber and steam 

fitter 292 

Cyclones 288 

Cypress a fine weather wood... 306 
Cypress, for frame, sash, belt 

course, soffit and trim 306 

Cypress gutter V-shaped to pre- 
vent ice splitting 317 

Cypress, spraddling, prostrate.. 22 

Dachshund andirons 173 

Dado and frieze scheme 5 

Daguerres 251 

Dairy income 15 

Dairy records 63 

Dais, bed 227 

Damage by thawing water pipes 229 
Damage loss vs. money penalty. 288 
Dame Nature's hearth-stone.... 221 

Damming the river 

Damp cellars an entirely 

unnecessary evil 324 

Damp course of moisture-proof 

slate or blue stone essential 308 

Damsel flies 93 

Damson plums 55 

Dan 26 

Dangerous lode stones 302 

"Darlings of the forest" 103 

Davenport, Abraham 124 

Davenport with inset table.... 218 

Davenports 234 

Dawdling habit contagious.... 294 

Day vs. contract job 294 

Dead-lights 230 

Deadening along fireproof lines 309 
Deadening floors with asbestos, 

sea-weed, paper, hair, felt.. 308 
Deadening floors with mixture 

of cement, sawdust and 

ashes 309 

Deadening of walls and floors 

in servants' quarters 197 

Deadly sewer gas 13 

Death by over-salting 19 

Death-dealing moisture . . . 303 

Death-dealing Triumvirate .... 58 



Death eggs oviposited 

Death hour in animal life 

Death of Angora Aurea 

Death of the bees 

Death of sheep 

Death of tree 

Decadence of the dignified 
Colonial 

Deciduous trees and shrubs.... 

Decorating the billiard room... 

Decoration 240, 242, 

Decoration, rococo 

Decorations, mural 

Decorative composition to con- 
ceal architectural errors... 

Deeds, maps and contracts for 
filing 

Deer 

Defects discovered before plas- 
tering 

Defoliation 

Delivery pipe of ram 

Delivery wagon 

Deliquescent trees 

Den alcove 

Den, fireproof 

Depopulating the earth 

Design and construction lasting 
forever 

Design, heraldic, molded in 
Caen stone cement mantel. 

Destroyer lurking in closed 
house 

Destruction of cement, stone 
and iron 

Destructive attrition, vibration 
and electrolysis 

Details of the building of Sea 
Boulders 

Developing concentration 

Developing room 

Developing vistas 

Development 

Devil's bit a cure for quinsy... 

Devil's riding horse 

Devil wagon 

Devon cattle 

Dewberries 

Diagonal boarding of under 
floor lessens chance of 
buckling after upper floor 
is laid 

Dies for tool making 

Dietetic poultry food values . . . 

Difference in floor levels, advan- 
tage and disadvantage of. . 

Digger wasps 

Dilemma, horn of 

Dillaway place in Berkshires.. 

Diminutive house copy of large 
house a mistake 

Dinghv's painter 

Dining room 187, ISP, 

Dining- room, circular 

Dining room, Colonial 

Dining room elliptical 

Dining room on new lines 

Dining room, outdoor porch . . . 

Dining- room, round 

Dining room, 16 feet high.. 130, 

Dining room, 16-foot stud 

Dining room skylight 

Dining room, southeast 

Dining room, summer 

Dining- room, telescopic 

Dining room, -winter 

Dining rooms, awninged, out- 
door 

Dirt costs so much per yard to 

remove 

Dirt-holding roots 

Discounting the farmer's three 
years' wait for asparagus . . 



93 
35 
27 
91 
31 
83 

300 

122 
252 
241 
234 

304 

303 
67 

296 

39 

9 

17 

80 

234 

220 

94 

299 

189 

241 

302 

302 

275 
34 

229 
77 
75 
97 
90 

338 
17 
55 



317 
63 
33 

307 

93 

289 

211 

305 
261 
2**0 
133 
144 
133 
130 
2T7 
133 
134 
130 



212 
152 
270 
152 

138 

291 

22 

340 



INDEX 



385 



I >ish drier, elecl rical 238 

uist\ towel, insanitary --'■'• 

Dish-washing arrangement .... 223 
I tishonest builder s modus 

operandi 289 

I "isinrecting tank 13 

Disintegration of bolt head and 

rivet 302 

Dislodging' the wood jigger.... 82 

Disproving plant debility 87 

Dissatisfaction over nonde- 
script production 300 

Dissipating depression 240 

Ditches, deep-draining 21 

Ditch-digging offsets 96 

Ditch, natural 244 

Diving plank 207 

Dock protected by brass yacht 

rail 274 

Doctor Hexamer 1, 51 

Doctor Holmes' | m 83 

Dog attributes 41 

Dog chicken thief 27 

"Dog eat dog" 94 

Dog-faced pansies 87 

I »og monument 27 

I >og trots 55 

Dogs 27 

Dogging the job 293 

Dogwood branches, red 7 7 

Dome 234 

Domed hall 132 

Don 26 

Donjon gate, iron banded 132 

Doodle bug, plebeian 91 

Door-bell, electric 237 

Door, Colonial 132 

Door controlled by foot pres- 
sure 132, 183 

I >oor. Dutch, with and without 

side lights 305 

Door, early pivoted 328 

Door footings 2 12 

Door, front, method of reaching 296 
Door head, tapestry draped.... 242 
Door just right is a fine home 

greeter 305 

Door mat inset 160 

Door, oak - ribbed and iron- 
banded 130, 217 

Door, oak, 7x9 161 

Dook, oak, six feet wide 142 

Door of bathroom electrically 

controlled 231 

Door of feudal England 328 

Door of oak, iron strapped and 

grilled 277 

I >oor openings moved 295 

Door panel of the 16th century 328 
Door, pantry, with glass inset.. 220 

I »OOr plates 242 

Door saddle; its passing- means 
less dust, disturbance of 
carpets and space short- 
ening: 317 

Door saddles make a tighter fit- 
ting door 317 

Door, sliding, against chimney. 21 i 

I' \ sliding close-jointed l";i 

I »oor-step 221 

I 'oors 7. r ,, 169 

Doors and windows, extra lip- 
ping and rabbeting a neces- 
sity 211 

I "S and windows, imitation.. 21.", 

I 'oors. blind 227 

J 'oors. butler's pantry 187 

I 'oors close to fireplace 295 

Doors, closet, hung to open out- 
ward 235 

I 'oors, double. between bed- 
rooms 295 



Doors, double, each side of a 
partition curb noise 

Doors, aouoie, on balcony with 
centre-knuckle and elbow- 
joint 

I 'oors, Dutch 221, 222, 

Poors, exterior and interior....' 
Doors, four, in two sections.... 

Doors, hanging of 

Doors, invisible 

I 'oors. metal, air-spaced. ....'.'.' 

1 'oors. metal sheathed 

1 'Oors, mirror 122, 133, 183, 

Doors, new close-jointed 

Doors of the I neas 

Doors, outside 

I 'oors, secret paneled 

I 'oors, sliding 

Doors, sliding, making one pnl 
lared room on first story. . . 

Doors to clothes chute on each 
floor 

Doors, two, in butler's pantry."! 

Doorway, high portiered 

Doorway of unusual height.... 

Doorway, tapestry-draped 

I >ormer, Gothic 

Dormer lift '.'.'.'.'. 

Dormers and gable windows 
must thoroughly light that 
third story 

Dormers in major key ......... 

Double barreled plant 

Double doors and windows 

Doubling- floor beams 

Dove cote 

1 'rachenfels .140, 

Dragon, bronze, from Japan....' 

Dragon flies 

Dragon in the rocky cleft .....". 

Dragons, building 

1 >rain, stone 

Drainage ' '. 

Drainage for a side hill house 

Drainage for plants 

Drainage, natural 

Drainage of plant baskets 

I >raining a cellar 

I >rapery over bed 

I draughts shut off 

Draughts through health-yield- 
ing chimney flue 

Drawbridge, feudal . ...217, 

Drawer in mantel breast 

Drawer pull 

Drawers fitted with rollers....! 

Drenching and mulching- 

Dress and diamond smu tie let- 
outdone 

Dressers, manner of shipping. . 

I 'ressers. pantry 

I 'ressing- electroliers 

I 'ressing- rooms 

I (ressing table 

"Drest in a little brief author- 
ity" 

I >rift wood blaze 

1 'rift wood fire 

Drill, dynamite and wedge 

I >rive pi] f ram 

I >rop shelf 

1 'nnitli on law us 

1 >ruid altars 

Dry grass grown hollow 

I »ry rot 

I »ry technique of building. . ! . . . 

l trying machine 

l >rying-oui days ! 

I niai purpose cattle ! ! . ! 

Duck mms. six-foot 

Duck ponds, trio 

Duckling murderers 

1 "uckling pond 



324 



311 
261 
235 

277 
2 'J 6 
226 
121 
238 
230 

iyy 

220 
197 
199 
146 

154 

229 
152 
130 
130 
130 
305 
305 



330 
213 
KM 

62 
315 
333 
142 
244 

93 

20 1 
288 
248 
212 
307 
78 
252 
113 
305 
22 7 
332 

320 
244 

227 

235 

235 

79 

229 
296 
296 
237 
197 
228 

293 

242 
219 
160 

:i 

2 
21 
129 
2 14 
254 
299 
22 4 
2 41 
17 

27; 

71 
59 

11 



386 



INDEX 



Dueling grounds 73 

Dust-gathering wool draperies 241 

Dust guard for books 219 

Dust line 7 

Dusting floor 33 

Dusty highway retards growth 

of vegetable and flower. . . . 330 

Dutch belted cattle 15 

Dutch kettle stands 233 

Dwarf fruit trees 47 

Dwelling, detached, fireproof. . . 302 
Dynamite and crowbar up- 
heaved the stone 153 

Dynamiting the soil 49 

Dynamo 231 

Earth flax 236 

Earth pupaters 93 

Earth worm - eating blind 

ground-mole 22 

Earthquakes 288 

Earth's invisible choir 41 

East Medford naturalist 37 

Eastham 51 

Eastlake interiors 300 

Easy chair 237 

Eave spouts 160 

Eaves sacred to owner's use... 247 

Ebonized oak plank 5 

Echeverias 95 

Echo in cement wall and floor 302 

Edelweiss 95 

Edinburgh 23 

Eerie creeps dispelled 203 

Eerie shriek of the night hawk 45 

Egg beater, electric 238 

Egg to imago 91 

Eggs, water-proof 91 

Egyptian design in mantel face 233 

Egyptian motto 219 

Electric cable system 294 

Electric fan, up-chimney 229 

Electric fans against outlets... 277 
Electric light controlled by 

closet door 237 

Electric light for chimney ven- 
tilation 231 

Electric light niched 230 

Electric lighting 236 

Electric lighting contract 292 

Electric lights edging pool 203 

Electric pump 9 

Electric sewing machine 230 

Electric switch 226 

Electric switch controlling ex- 
terior entrances 237 

Electric up-chimney fan.... 223, 234 

Electrical protection 220 

Electrically protected safe 227 

Electricity 51 

Electrolier of non-rusting glass 

19, 219 
Electrolier of swords and bay- 
onets 281 

Electroliers and brackets of 

glass 154 

Elephant's ears, five-foot 95 

Elevator, electric 225 

Elimination of draughts 302 

Elizabethan 300 

Elm beetle 58 

Elm tree sphinx 93 

Elm vs. lightning and tornado. 86 

Elysian fields 95 

Emancipated superman 238 

Emancipation dawning 74 

Embryo grave digger 93 

Employers' liability 292 

Emulating the railroad builder. 211 

Enamel, cream white 282 

Enamel white paint often a 
dictator in gala and bed- 
room 327 



End of summer's reign 84 

Enemies that fly, crawl or bore. 57 

Engine for ice making 238- 

English country house 212 

English house 140 

English sparrow 37 

Enigma of life 98: 

Enlarging small rooms 237 

Enmeshed in friendship net.... 293- 
Ennui and leisure detrimental to 

the average business man.. 337 

Ennuied listeners 41 

Ensilage for horses 74 

Ensilage for pigs 74 

Entasis in a stone wall gives 

added beauty 305, 309- 

Entrance appreciated by mendi- 
cant, stranger, or bosom 

friend 312 

Entrance, location of 7 

Entrance, half barricaded 13» 

Entrance hall 257 

Entrance hall unshadowed 244- 

Entrance hall square or rec- 
tangular 325- 

Entrance ideal, with tiled walk, 
grassy bank, and waving 

fronds 312 

Entrance which outshone a pil- 
lared, beamed, and paneled 

hall 313- 

Entry changed to a divaned 

book alcove 326- 

Errors, glaring 29fr 

Escutcheon 235 

Espalier fruit growing 53 

Esplanade 203, 214, 217 

Esplanade, rock 277 

Essential changes should be 

made 295 

Essentials of comfortable plan- 
ning 305 

Essentials to building success. . 291 
Eternal vigilance the price of 

comfortable living 302 

Eulogy on the dog 29- 

Euonymous, scale-throttled .... 101 

Evening song of the birds 41 

Evergreen 77, 86, 95 

Evergreens, propagation of . . . . 248 
Every month in year flower.... 96 
Evolution from egg to larva... 92 
Evolution of rough land into 

park 73 

Excrescence on farm house.... 13 

Excurrent trees 80 

Expanding and contracting 

powers of metal 302 

Expenditure, lavish 287 

Expenditure, unwise 69- 

Expense, avoidance of unneces- 
sary 291 

Expense books 63 

Expensive houses entail extras 297 
Expensive object lesson in fires 331 
Experience of a novice dearly 

bought 247 

Experiments 83' 

Extensive plantings 338' 

Exterior and interior beauty... 213 
Extras an aggravating expense 292 
Eye service 294 

Failing river of life 96' 

Failure number five 51 

Failure to uproot grass tufts.. 59" 

Fairview 270 

Falling plaster 232 

Family graveyard 25, 26 

Fan, electric, up-chimney 223 

Fan-grown trees 53 

Fan lights 216 



INDEX 



387 



Farm barriers 67 

Farm being shaped into choice 

building lots 339 

Farm, bogless 99 

Farm brook 71 

Farm business office <!:! 

Farm drudgery 41 

Farm help 58 

Farm help quarters 63 

Farm house, alterations 2 

Farm lawn vs. hay field 19 

Farm library 63 

Farm lightly 58 

Farm lookout 34 

Farm ownership 1 

Farm tragedy, second 25 

Farm utensils 63 

Farm values vs. village lot 

values 337 

Farmarcadia 75 

Farmer, amateur, vs. apple 

orchard 120 

Farmer sometimes adds to his 
substance through the city 

dweller 337 

Farmer, sophistry of 9 

Farmer vs. commuter 104 

Farmer who dodges three years' 

wait for asparagus 340 

Farmer's calendar 74 

Farmer's false economy 49 

Farmer's grange 73 

Farmer's opportunity 41 

Farmer's wives and daughters. 74 

Farming, amateur 58, 243 

Farming and housebuilding.... 342 

Farming the city 340 

Fathoming bird lore 35 

Faucet, combination 232 

Faucets, non-projecting 224 

Faulty construction if realized 

will be realized for life.... 329 

Faverolles 31 

Favissa, a real 237 

Feature hall, stair, or both.... 325 

Feature levels 134 

Features, outlined pergola, ver- 
anda, fireplace, mantel, 

staircase, etc 306 

Felting will not entirely elimi- 
nate noise 317 

Fence arched outward at top... 65 

Fence, galvanized wire knotted 69 

Fence of finicky cobble stones 335 

Fence of single buried stones.. 335 

Fence, verdure screened 243 

Fences, rough bouldered walls 

of the pioneer 335 

Fences, stone, brick, tile, bronze, 
wire, cast and wrought iron, 

cement, and turf 335 

Fender top seats 233 

Ferns, fronded, interrogation 

point 183 

Ferns, walking on land 100 

Ferro-cement construction .... 302 

Fertilizer, liquid 95 

feudal drawbridge 244 

Feudal fireplace 232 

Feudal ball 217 

Feudal lords and retainers 140 

Few houses meet one's ideal... 301 

Ficus pandurata 172 

Field sheds 19 

Field voles 4 5 

Fig trees 62 

Fighting dampness with water- 
proof paint and tar 308 

Fighting shrike 45 

Figures, accurate 292 

Figuring of artisans 289 

filberts r>8 

Filing-cabinet fireproof room... 303 



Filing room in basement 122 

Filler ferrets out the borer.. . 257 

Filter, hygienic 225 

Filter of charcoal 9 

Financial sheet anchors may 

prove convenient 297 

Finials 7 

Finney's turnip 100 

Fir cattle trough 59 

Fir plank flooring 71 

Fire and burglar battling 226 

Fire and flood 288 

Fire axes, hooks, bars and fire 

rope 332 

Fire catechism 332 

Fire control 331 

Fire control vs. fireproof 302 

Fire dog, field of 175 

Fire draft stopped at beam ends 

and plate line 293 

Fire drill for a neighborhood.. 332 
Fire extinguishers hung wher- 
ever needed 331 

Fire! Fire! Five times in 

twenty-five years 331 

Fire, first aids for fire fighters 332 

Fire hazard, elimination of 248 

Fire hoods 242 

Fire in chimney, remedy for... 332 
Fire inducers, dirt and rubbish 332 

Fire irons, nickel plated 231 

Fire king tw r ice a victor 331 

Fire line stack 331 

Fire pole escape 226 

Fire precautions 294 

Fire-protected by cement and 

hollow brick 306 

Fire-protected I beams 146 

Fire-protection by air space.... 199 
Fire risk curbed at plate line 

and floor timber ends 310 

Fire ropes of wire 226 

Fire safety seat 226 

Fire serpent, trail of 98 

Fire shield, plate glass 233 

Fire tools and fire irons ... .220, 233 
Fire-warders, grotesque midget 179 

Fire worshippers 221 

Fireless cooker 2 

Fireplace, black grottoed 233 

Fireplace carried on trolley 

irons 5 

Fireplace centred with brick 

partition 319 

Fireplace freak 320 

Fireplace, hobbed 172 

Fireplace ingle 124 

Fireplace jewel safe 227 

Fireplace makes a draughty 
room, pulling air with giant 

force up chimney 320 

Fireplace mantel to door height 233 
Fireplace not inconveniently 

close to doors and windows 311 
Fireplace omitted in dining- 
room 233 

Fireplace rings of iron 277 

Fireplace, second story hall... 
Fireplace separated by a reredos 

answering for two rooms.. 320 
Fireplace set above the hearth 

dangerous 319 

Fireplace, stone settled 140 

Fireplace ten feet wide 132 

Fireplace, tiny 227 

Fireplace ventilation 122 

Fireplace vs. windows 227 

Fireplace wide and prominent 
until discovery of coal nar- 
rowed its beauty 319 

Fireplace with double flue 110 

Fireplace with ten-foot opening 

132, 174, 220 



388 



INDEX 



919 

Fireplaces • ■ £" 

Fireplaces, cure for smoking... 31J 
Fireplaces from Ripon Abbey to 

Venice • i6i 

Fireplaces, iron dampers and 
baffles, less beauty, less 
flame, more heat, more com- 

fort if 

Fireplaces, twin ^» 

Fireplaces with ash flues aia 

Fireproof and semi - fireproof 

building's 302, 304 

Fireproof brick shaft 



Fireproof brick vault ........ . . -- 4 

Fireproof den 122, 220. 22b 

Fireproof misnomers <>"- 

Fireproof one-story annex.... 3U.J 

Fireproof paint 21*5, 30- 

Fires unguarded £>? 

First aid in fighting fires Aij 

jf irst and second mortgages.... o4u 

First English sparrows •>>? 

First floor bedrooms ••_ » 

"First think out your work .... <si» 

Fish tank, water tight 28- 

Fishing craft • g" 

Fishing from the veranda tbi 

1- ishing tackle -£j 

Fissure in rock..... *«* 

Five exclamation points laa 

Five rooms at $180 each 270 



Five trunk chestnut. 



58 



Fixtures, bathroom • 282 

Fixtures, combination gas and 

electric -;,'! 

Fixtures, electric -*' 

Flag pole • ■ -\\ 

Flag pole as cesspool vent ijs 

Flagless pole ;*• 

Flambeau fireplace • «" 

Flashing window cap, frame 

and jointures . \ . ££-> 

Flat blue stone capped -- * 

Flea \l 

Flicker • V\ 

Flies, omniverous eaters . v L 

Flitch or sandwich beam, made 

with iron plates A\b 

Floating platform • - Ul 

Floor beams crowned to prevent 

much sagging • • • • ^ lb 

Floor beams cut at an angle it 

set in brick, stone or cement aft 

Floor beams, leveling • • • • 29b 

Floor beams of story above 

never used for ceiling beams 31/ 

Floor beams, twelve-inch 2o4 

Floor beams with bridle irons, 

strap irons, and tie rods... dlb 

Floor brace V-shape 254 

Floor, dirt 

Floor for a basement should be 

under-cemented and tarred. 331 

Floor, glass •••-• 1*2 

Floor grates for up-draft --- 

Floor, kiln dried eight-inch oak 

with ebonized keys. ; . v . . • l»J 
Floor, mezzanine . .130, li2 193, 219 

Floor, oak ;--,V. -, V " 

Floor of two and one half-inch 

boards | 

Floor, patent cement &&° 

Floor poorly finished makes 
furniture wobbly and is a 

fine dirt-gripper 317 

Floor, red birch -^ 

Floor, tiled ]1" 

Flooring, Georgia rift pine 179 

Flooring holds better with cut 
nails than with wire, and 
blind nailing is essential... 31 1 
Flooring on scantling over 
st<me or gravel tears 
asunder 331 



Floors, cement 213 

Floors, deadening of 293 

Floors easily swilled 222 

Floors, fireproof, with patent 

cement flooring 317 

Floors, hardwood 234, 317 

Floors, knee-aching task to 

plane and finish 317 

Floors of maple 234 

Floors of selected red birch... 155 

Floors, parquetry 146 

Floors, revamping of 5 

Floors, tiled 222 

Flora, spring awakening of.... 81 

Floral contrasts 243 

Floral Jack and a bean stalk.. 100 

Floral surprises 90 

Florentine cemetery 82 

Floret's deepest nectary 4 7 

Flower benches of slate 219 

Flower borders of cement 219 

Flower bug 91 

Flower of sulphur 248 

Flower pots and boxes con- 
cealed in mossy banks 312 

Flowerless world 90 

Flowers, cut 240 

Flowers glorifying maturity.... 96 

Flowers of childhood 96 

Flowers of the wild 96 

Flowers of romantic youth.... 96 
Flowers, rare anthology of.... 80 
Flue, ventilating, ceiling height 223 

Flush tank, low 231 

Flying arch, ornamentation of. . 310 
Flying arch under stair soffits. 329 

Flying squirrels 59 

Foliage-embowered dwelling . . 303 
Folk-lore tales of Washington. 124 

Follow-the-sun bungalow 251 

Foot scraper of iron gate brace 311 
Footings, brass, for service door 242 

Footings of rough stone 224 

Footless larva 93 

Footstones of Solomon's Temple 251 

Force pump 3 

Forecourt 214 

Forehanded farmer 9 

Forest-born house 303 

Forest cathedral 71 

Forest thinning, haphazard 84 

Forest trees, folly of trans- 
planting 85 

Forest wilderness 133 

Forestry papers 57 

Forewarned and forearmed 287 

Forfeit vs. bonus 290 

Forge 63 

Forge, electric 225 

Formal garden, Italian 150 

Fort Nonsense 124 

Fortressed homes 232 

Forty days without food failed 
to kill Doctor Tanner; four 
minutes in the black hole of 
Calcutta would have closed 

the contract 320 

Fortv-room house to ten-room 

house 200 

Foster mother hen 11 

Foul air 9 

Foundation angle to fit the site 304 

Foundation, boulder stone 146 

Foundation, frost-proof 244 

Foundation must total twelve 
inches wider than super- 
structure 307 

Foundation posts, cedar 261 

Foundation squared and 

plumbed 305 

Foundation, stone entasis 110 

Foundation stones, brown and 

green 274 



1XDEX 



389 



Foundation stones tar coated.. 214 
Foundation wall. jogs and 

angles add largely to cost. 308 

Fountain 133, 2 1 S 

Fountain-centn id room 129 

Fountain, electric, Bower bor- 
dered 191, 277 

Fountain, Ibis-centred 244 

Fountain of 5Touth '•"' 

Fountain, Pompeiian 1-'.' 

Four doors hinged to make two 2">i 

Four footed friends '-'■'< 

Four poster 62 

Four seasons in glass 121 

Fowl coop 247 

Fragrant sassafras 84 

Frame to remove partition if 
necessary. and stud to 

admit of cutting doorways 330 
Framed mosses and autumn 

leaves 251 

Framed nature picture 312 

Freebooters 91 

Free-from-odor house 223 

Freedom from coal dust and 

furnace noises 236 

Freedom from noise, heat and 

cold 252 

Freedom of country life 63 

Freeing plant food enslaved for 

centuries 49 

Freight allowance 292 

French casements 184 

French Renaissance 212 

Fresh Water Cove 61 

Frieze 5 

Frieze, stenciled 234 

Frisky 25, 26 

Frogs lifted by herons 100 

Frogs that changed color 100 

Front door approach 326 

Frontiersman's expedient 226 

Fronton glassed in like a ward- 

ian case 325 

Fruit 243 

Fruit and game pictures tabu.. 220 

Fruit crop 53 

Fruit diet 47 

Fruit eaters 93 

Fruit, worthless 49 

Fruticetum 77 

Fumed oak trim 324 

Funeral cortege 26 

funnel ceilinged corridor 223 

Funnel hall from front door to 

roof 172 

Furnace cold air box of metal.. 323 
Furnace overheating prevented 
by fastening one register 

open 323 

Furnace with double fire box... 236 

Furring 161 

Furring up of floors shirked... 317 

Gable apex 254 

Gables 115 

Gables of chestnut plank 161 

Gables paneled 213 

''■allies with hanging balconies 
ami verdure-canopied ver- 
andas 331 

' Jala rooms 237 

'lalvani/.ed iron pipes painted.. 322 

Galvanized mesh screens 22 I 

Galvanized wire lath 281 

Galvanized wire seat 239 

Gambrel roof adds beauty and 

comfort 305 

Game preserve, protected im 

Garage 138. 213 

' '•' n •• e. li lei. roof 245 

Garage, fireproof cement 203 

Garage in an under-hiil house. ::ot 



( J-arage, Inexpensive 

Garage pit 203 

Garage with turn table -i'< 

Garbage incinerator, ^as 223 

Garden a house extension 243 

Garden, Colonial it". 243 

Garden of lOdeii clouded l>\ frost 102 

Garden pests 31 

Gardens, formal 217 

Gargoyles, rabid-mouthed, gro- 
tesquely molded 172 

Garret heightened 7 

Gas log connection 237 

Gas-packed cesspool 11 

Gas piping 237 

Gasket 132 

i i-asoline engine 9 

Gasoline in earth-buried tank.. 307 

Gate, iron pointed 244 

Gate, lych 243 

Gate valve in sewer pipe 13 

Gate with chain and cannon ball 239 

Gates and barriers 334 

Gates, concealed 226 

Gates limitless 334 

Gates opened awkwardly 51 

Gateways shrub-arched 243 

Gazebo, pergolad 203 

Geese 15 

Gemmed 'mid rock-ribbed moun- 
tains 211 

Geometrically designed garden. 243 

Georgia pine beams 291 

Geranium cuttings, in. mm 218 

German vinegar making 63, 

Get-it -in- at -a 11- hazard features 

may mar a unique design... 327 
Getting acquainted with the 
nooks and corners of a 

house in one day 328 

Giant's Causeway, America's... 153 

Giant croton 87 

Gig tumble 23 

Gilt monstrosities, banishment 

of 236 

Gim-crack creations outcome of 

license 300 

Girder, pillar, entablature, frieze 299 
Girdling rabbit, balking the.... 49 
Girt and girders made from 
separate beams nailed 

together 315 

Girts of pre-Revolutionary barn 244 

Glacial action 221 

Gladsome hand of greeting.... 99 
Glaring contrasts. such as 
Gothic elbowing Colonial, 

avoided 304 

Glaring plate glass 214 

Glass 213 

Glass for racks, set basin sup- 
ports, etc - :: 1 

Glass for table tops 231 

Glass from floor to window top 110 

Glass hood in kitchen 281 

Glass house from cellar to roof 

tree 303 

Glass - ribbed reflectors for 

cellar 225 

Glass traps a mechanical pos- 
sibility 322 

Glass tubes concealed at cor- 
nice line -' : ' 

Glass-walled room, cooling of. 234 

i i-lassed-ih porch 321 

Glassing in under veranda. 155, 225 

Glazed brick 303 

Glittering ice plants 89 

Gluttonous debauches 91 

Goats, Angora 31, 58 

"God. the first garden mad." . . 82 

■( tod's first temples" 65 

"God's in Mis Heaven" 75 



390 



INDEX 



God's messengers 41 

Golden carpet 'neath the shrub- 
bery 89 

Golden-hued rock 274 

Golden queen raspberry 47 

Golden woodpecker 45 

Goldfinch 39 

Goldfish, murder of 71 

Gong of feudal times 132 

Good ship Fortune 51 

Gooseberries 55 

Gothic arch 329 

Gothic cottage with head-hit- 
ting ceilings and jig-saw 

embellishments 300 

Gothic stair coeval with early 
stair of France and Ger- 
many 325 

Gothic tortuous winding stair.. 325 

Gourds 102 

Gourmands, aphidiverous 93 

Government maps 57 

Government seeds 103 

Governor Woods 55 

Gradient of a true water 

shedder 305 

Graffito treatment 169 

Grafting 49 

Granary 41 

Grand-dad sleigh 61 

Grandfather's clock 261, 277 

Grandfather's clock on stair 

landing 134 

Grandiose architecture vs. grace 305 

Granite ledge vibration 129 

Granite stepping stones, 6x8... 154 

Grannies crowned geniuses.... 97 

Grape border preparation 249 

Grape-growing, crude 249 

Grape protection 55 

Grape settings 55 

Graperies, chicken coop 249 

Grapes 243 

Grapes big producers, non- 

mildewers and sure ripeners 339 

Grapes, Hamburg 249 

Grapes, Niagara 55 

Grappling iron 277 

Grass and brush fire 113 

Grass diggers 93 

Grass-grown crater 222 

Grass paths underdrained 239 

Grave diggers, embryo 93 

Gravel pit 22 

Gravel vs. town asphalt 243 

Gravelly loam 73 

Gravelly southern slope 247 

Graves, elimination of 25 

Gray skies 43 

Gray squirrels 22, 65 

Grease traps 223 

Greased ways 291 

Great Dane andirons 173 

Greek god 218 

Green frogs of the lily pads. . . . 100 

Green Mountain State 31 

"Green not alone in summer 

time" 134 

Green soiling 21, 74 

Green striplings 73 

Green wood shrinks 303 

Green wood sponsors dry rot... 326 

Greenery bird retreat 89 

Greenhouse bouquet of bloom.. 154 
Greenhouse, expensive con- 
struction avoided 247 

Greenhouse feeder 193 

Greening dead stumps 99 

Greenwich Inn 124 

Grille of brass concealing safe. 227 

Grille, stair 261 

Grilles, hinged 236 



Grilles, metal 236 

Grim Reaper 13 

Groin a vaulted roof 329 

Grooved for sheet glass 215 

Grosbeak 39 

Gros-Coleman 249 

Grotesque midget fire warders. 175 

Grotto under store arches 204 

Ground air 213, 224 

Ground hog burrows 22 

Ground mole, blind 22 

Grounds arboretum edged 150 

Growing odors of bloom-packed 

flower pit 248 

Growing plants on stairs and 

centre table 240 

Growth, arch enemy of 240 

Grubs 35 

Guest book alcove 239 

Guest room ever remembered.. 315 

Guest rooms 227, 254 

Guest stair, private 225 

Guernsey cattle 17 

Guinea fowl 33 

Gullied slopes 22 

Guns 229 

Gutter, arris, zinc-lined cypress 318 

Gutter, cement 224 

Gutter, cobble 144 

Gutter crimped to prevent 

bursting with ice 318 

Gutter problem exasperating. . . 31S 
Gutter, stone, elimination of... 69 
Gutter, ugly half circle hang- 
ing gutter 318 

Gym. in the open 122 

Gymnasium 225 

Gymnasium, canvas floored.... 122 

Gypsy moth 37, 58, 74 

Haii- raising poachers 45 

Half-above-ground cellar 62 

Half-back service stair 326 

Half moon decoration in seg- 
mented ceiling 189 

Hall alcove screened 234 

Hall, circular and vaulted 132 

Hall, domed 132 

Hall draught stopper 160 

Hall, feudal 217 

Hall, flambeau lighted 232 

Hall, gallery, nine feet wide.... 132 

Hall, Hartford council 124 

Hall lighting 227 

Hall-mark of distinction or a 

black mark of mediocrity. . 311 

Hall of Fame, arboreal 

Hall, red tiled 277 

Hall, stop-draught 277 

Hall, the keynote of house.... 217 

Hall, 33x33, second story 183 

Hall treatment, unusual 

Hall. 20x40, beamed and col- 
umned 142 

Hall, twenty-five feet high 237 

Hall with barreled ceiling 133 

Hammer noises controlled by 

low pipe connection 323 

Hammer tap travesty 290 

Hammock, tree-swung 251 

Hammocks hung in shadow of 

post and arch 204 

Hancock, John 217 

TIand imprints of 2,000 years ago 129 

Hand rail, curved 129 

Hand-rived shakes of Colonial 

davs 313 

Handy boy 2 94 

Hanging shelves 63 

Happy-go-lucky lad 282 

Harbor view 159 

Harbor watch dog 286 



INDEX 



391 



Hardware 235 

Hardware, gold plated 118 

Hard wood better than soft for 

paint 282 

Hardy English walnut 59 

Harrows 59 

Harvard. Roman, and tapestry 

brick 309 

Harvest of form and color 91 

"Has been" 242 

Has-been (?) Ox 19 

Hauberk 218 

Haven of rest 242 

Haverstraw tunnel 159 

•"Hawk from a handsaw" 293 

Hawk moths 92 

Hawks of insect world 93 

Haws, scarlet 87 

Hay barn 1 

Hay crop 15, 21 

Hay crop throttled 74 

Hay ricks 15 

Hazel copse 39 

Hazel nuts 58 

Headpieces of service can be 
made of sheet lead, zinc 

or tin 314 

Headers and stretchers laid in 

Flemish or English bond... 309 
Health-giving- North woods.... 211 
Health-giving rays of the sun. . 303 
Hearth arches, skew back, 4x6 
timbers halved prevent dis- 
placement 319 

Hearths 233 

Hearthstone, giant 221 

Heartsease 273 

Heat, sun and ventilation 241 

Heater, kerosene 248 

Heater piece 101 

Heating and water pipes carried 
to porch and conservatory 

and capped 321 

Heating economy calls for large 

fire box 323 

Heating, luxurious Roman 236 

Heating pipes concealed 200 

Heating plant 189, 236, 324 

Heating plant for hot-house... 248 
Heavy soil suitable for crops 
needing the whole summer 

to mature 338 

Hebron 83 

Hedge of arbor vitae 335 

Hedge barriers 67 

Hedge in double and triple 

rows 69 

Hedge, irregular curving 243 

Hedge of grotesque shape 6'.i 

Hedge of Japanese privet 67 

Hedge of laurel willow 67 

Hedge of Norway spruce and 

hemlock 335 

Hedge ogee curved 69 

Hedge, osage orange 67 

Hedge propagation 69 

Hedge pruned to spell "Hill- 
crest" 69 

Hedge, Rosa rugosa 67 

Hedge rows transformed 55, 78 

Hedge, sweet brier 67 

Height and width of plate shelf 329 

Heirlooms, attic-stored 62 

Hellebore 57 

Help-draw, ugly chimney pot . . 234 

Helter-skelter e^ deposit 92 

Hemlock, poison 88 

Hemlock, toweling 71 

Hemlock's faithful branches... 1 :i I 

Hen hawks 33 

Hennery neither square nor 

plumb 247 

Henry IV, Tart II 287 



Henry of Navarre 87 

Heraldry 189 

Hermit thrush 47 

Hero of New England's dark 

day 124 

Herons lifted the frogs 100 

Hibernating house 62 

Hickory blight 58 

Hickories 58, 65 

Hidden basic construction 304 

Hidden waterways 89 

Highboys 221 

High pillared fronts and pan- 
theon entablature 300 

High posters 5 

Hillcrest Farm 17 

Hillcrest Hall 121 

Hillcrest Manor 104, 140 

Hillcrest Manor Park 73 

Hilltop 105 

Hinge, double action 235 

History, sacred and profane.... 87 

Hitting the nail 294 

Hobby unseated 19 

Hog Hill 63 

Hog selfishness 41 

Hole-in-ground greenhouse .... 

22, 247, 329 

Hollow brick 142 

Hollow brick tile, covered with 
cement, is ideal construction 

in non-earthquake countries 309 
Hollow brick veneered with 

-hakes 303 

Hollow brick double wall brick 

tied ... 309 

Hollow square of our farm 

buildings 331 

Hollow tree shelter 299 

Hollow tree trunk hibernation. 94 

Holocaust of insects 57 

Holstein-Fresian 17 

Holy-stoning 5 

Home 247 

Home-brewed extracts 97 

Home embowered in apple 

blossoms 120 

Home greeter, a 27 

Homes, outing 251 

Homestakers 61 

Honey, poisoned 88 

Honeycombed parapet 239 

Honorable mention 74 

Hood for range 2 

Hood, glass 281 

Hooded mantel 325 

Hopping sparrows 43 

Hornet 94 

Horse ambition 41 

Horse and extra man at work 
grading, thinning out and 

setting new trees 339 

Horse and windlass 103 

Horse barrel cart 55 

Horse boarders 26, 58, 339 

Horsechestnut tree, giant 241 

Horse dirt scoop 22, 244 

Horse diseases 19 

Horse posts in shade 244 

Horse shoe arch 155 

Horse uncurbed 23 

Horses 15, 17 

Horses vs. houses 304 

Horseradish patches . . .... 99 

Horticultural alphabet 80 

Horticultural sextette 78 

Horticultural vagabond 15 

Hot air currents 236 

Hot air heating plant and front 

door sill register 323 

Hot-bed sash 247 

Hot water heater 223 



392 



INDEX 



Hot water heating, an open 
expansion tank is a com- 
plete safety valve 323 

Hot water pipes liable to freeze 

through carelessness of help 323 

Hot water plant 236 

Hour glass moves more swiftly 

in the horticultural world. 237 

Houdans 31 

House additions, preparing for. 304 
House, adjustable telescopic... 203 

House, analysis of 295 

House anchored to ledge 306 

House angle to suit the site. . . . 301 

House, arched under 307 

House, bi-family 158 

Houseboat on land 2S2 

House builders never attain 

coveted perfection 305 

House building fundamentals: 

health, comfort and idealism 301 

House costing $12,000 288 

House costing $2,500 288 

House crude in the morning lias 
every partition in place by 

night 329 

House deterioration 302 

House enlarged, yet not en- 
larged 158 

House, heated 244 

House ideal 211 

House individualization close to 

line of criticism 305 

House, locking of 297 

House, making of the 305 

House martins 35 

House moving cost 53 

House, new, counting cost of. . . 287 
House, new, swung into the 

mire of mediocrity 313 

House, new, untaxed 215 

House octagonal 303 

House of a dozen balconies.... 115 

House of flesh and blood 160 

House of the cross 129 

House, portable 2 57 

House, psychic effect of an ideal 240 

House rising from ledge 213 

House round as a gasometer. . . 303 

House, sanitary 254 

House side-hilled 224, 274 

House site, bare, hole-in ground, 
stoned-up cellar, upright 
posts, completed dwelling. . 

51, 110, 330 

House, stone, vs. health 273 

House, studying from garret to 

cellar 296 

House, telescopic 200 

House that spanned a city block 115 

House untaxable 215 

House warmer 232 

House well back from road.... 330 
Household gods and heirlooms. 331 

Housemaid's sink 232 

Houses, moving a quintette of.. 159 

Housing the hen 247 

How to build 287 

How to face a house 212, 304 

How to have large attic rooms. 110 
How to know your house, 

though unbuilt 327 

How to partition a house in one 

day 328 

Humanity, unsophisticated .... 290 
Hummer, ruby gorget-throated 47 
Hundred roomed mansion 
crowning hills of Lenox or 

Aiken 299 

Hurdles, sheen 24 3 

Husbandry, details of 135 

Husking- bee 33 

Hydraulic power 9 



Hygiene 213 

Hygienic bath, the :;22 

Hygienic ice water 11 

Hygienic surface 241 

Hygienic wall covering 241 

I [j la, the 79 

Hypocaust of Rome 236 

I-beams, posts and stirrups of 

iron 213, 306 

Ice blast cavern 244 

Ice, cost of gathering 71 

Ice house vine-screened 71 

Ice house, roof framed with 

logs, and hay protected.... 314 

Ice-making plant 224, 238 

Ice pond 71 

Ice storage room 71 

Iceland moss 95 

Icelander's igloo 299 

Ichneumon fly 90, 93 

Ideal hypercritical building ' 
requires ample funds, 

ground and time 301 

Ideal power 9 

Ideal suite 135 

Idyl must be a real idyl, anti- 
podal to man-made town.. 338 
Ignorantly vandalizing- finest 

building conceptions 300 

"I laugh at the lore" 41 

Iliad of woes 291 

Illumined highway 75 

Immune grapes .' 55 

Imperial eagle 212 

Importing Philadelphia house 

trim 157 

Impoverishing the soil 58 

Impressionist 43 

Imprisoned buds of the maple. 45 
Imprisoning- June within a glass 
framed room adjoining the 

dining room 311 

Improvements, exterior 227 

Inanimates warring against the 

flesh 98 

Incas, peaked arches of 226 

Incubators 33 

Independence through develop- 
ment 337 

Indian, moccasin-shod 213 

Indian's wigwam site 150 

Indifferent stupid tyke 146 

Indirect radiation 323 

Infective dry rot prevented by 

air space 316 

Infringement on kitchen and 

basement 169 

Inf ront and outfront 252 

Ingle-seat 189 

Ingle, usable 238 

Inglenook 130 

Inglenook grilled and columned 138 

Ingle-nook, high arched 124 

Inglenook of living room 277 

Inglenook, recessed 110 

Inglenook semi-partitioned .... 329 

Tngress and egress 239, 311 

"In my salad days" 1 

Innovations require thought to 

avoid the grotesque 313 

Tnsane asylums 74 

Insanitary plumbing- 13 

Insect acid flesh protection 92 

Insect and fungi destroyers . . . . 57 

Insect autocrats 93 

Tnsect color warnings 92 

insect destruction 37, 90 

Insect dwellings 91 

Insect feeding- on insect 58 

Insect fighting 74 

Insect formed similar to elm 

leaf 92 



LXDEX 



393 



[nsecl genea logical tree 92 

[nsect gourmands 3, 3J 

insect nabitation, concealment 

Of !l 1 

Insecl head 92 

Insect houses, stone 94 

[nsect immune plants 87 

Insect lair invaded bj tar 33] 

insect leaf homes 94 

[nsect life, predatory 90 

[nsect life, unending procession 

of 92 

! nsect mfinu 35 

[nsect noniliions 90 

[nsect orphaned world 94 

[nsect pest, passing of 229 

Insect progeny 90 

[nsect scavengers 94 

1 nsi-i 1 . skunk 92 

Insect trust 57 

Insect vs. giant 94 

Insect with sail-covered wings. 91 

Insect wooden burrows 94 

Insecticide for fly, mosquito 

and spider 115 

[nsectless world 90 

Insects and fungi VS. fruit and 

vegetables 

Insects, antennae of 92 

Insects, checkmating of 282 

[nsects, environmental disguise 

of 92 

Insects, four-winged 92 

l nsects, pollen carrying 84 

[nsects, vegetivorous 93 

insecure nailings gap 303 

Insidious foes, fungoid growth 

and ground air 307 

Inspect before plastering 295 

Inspection, delay for 295 

Inspector 294 

Inspector a burden carrier 297 

inspector, necessity for 293 

Insurance, tire and glass 292 

Insurance, lapsing of 61 

Insurance, lessening of premium 

on 332 

Insuring stock 19 

Interest and taxes ::40 

Interest charge 292 

Interference, uncalled for 291 

Interior timbered and stuccoed. 140 

Interior vs. exterior 305 

Interiors 27.2 

Interrogation point fronded 

ferns 183 

In the swim or away from it... 211 

Introduction Day 90 

Investigation proves our world 

weedless 99 

Ionic and Doric cap 299 

Iron beams vs. Georgia pine 

girders 316 

Iron grilled front 222 

Imn pipe system of electric 

installation 236, 294 

Iron post and girder swathed in 

cement for fire protection.. 310 
Iron posts supporting iron 

girders 310 

Iron roller inset in pier 207 

Iron roofs and girders for out- 
buildings succumb to rust 

and decay 315 

Iron trolley rail brace 146 

Iron work must be rust-proof. 310 

Irresponsible contractors 289 

Irrigation 74 

Isaac's burial 83 

Island House l.'il 

Island in duck pond 71 

islands of evergreens 22 



Islands, verdure-crowned 142 

Isolation from clatter, heat and 

odors 115 

Italian garden 140, 200 

"it feels a pang as deep" 90 

"It's always morning" 208 

Ivy of bushy-headed growth... 98 

Jacob's burial 83 

January changed to June 227 

January house vs. I "ecember 

product 301 

Japanese chestnut 58 

Japanese evergreen, midget.... 312 

.Japanese gods of stmie 244 

Japanese plants 7 7 

Japanese rooms 122, 228 

Japanese silk effect 241 

Japan's painstaking propaga- 
tion of plants 101 

Javelin 140 

Jay human 41. 47 

Jeremiads of contractor 291 

Jersey cattle 17 

Jewel safe cemented in wall.... 227 

Jewelry concealed 229 

Joy of living 146 

Joy of pruning 83 

Jugglery and jingle of dollars. 41 

Juliet of the insect world 93 

Jungfrau, our 220 

Keeping room 

Kendal Green 82 

Kerosene fi re- 1 [ u e tie 1 1 e rs :::;i 

Kerosene torches of destruction 

Kerria's pea-green stalks 77 

Key cabinet 235 

Keyless and never-closed bird 

restaurant 101 

Keys of wood in gables 161 

Kiddom, glories of 284 

Kieffer pear 53 

Kill-weed liquors 69 

Killing tension 96 

King and churl 13 

King apples 49 

King Herod's edict 82 

King Moisture coming into his 

own 303 

King of Day 35 

Kins of trees 85 

Kins post holds up ridge and 

centres collar beams 306 

Kingfisher's bachelor traits ... 41 

Kinglets of the evergreen 

Kingship of living 121 

Kitchen cabinet of enameled 

steel 223 

Kitchen drain, purification of. . 9 

Kitchen galley 193 

Kitchen, light 2#5 

Kitchen mechanics, culinary 
appointments, and dining- 
room on lower road level.. 307 

Kitchen, north and east 212 

Kitchen odors, elimination of... 223 

Kitchen. semi-Dutch 221 

Kitchen settle 2 

Kitchen, small 2 

Kitchen, white 222 

Kitchen, white tiled 193 

Kitchen, winged 115 

Knickerbockers 51 

Knife of the mower 103 

Knight's vizor 15-1 

Knocker, brass 221 

Knocker electrically connected. 237 

Knots shellacked 62 

Know- your house though un- 
built 327 

Labels, copper 95 



394 



INDEX 



Labor and material bills 288 

Labor cheap 289, 296 

Labor contract 288, 296 

Lachenfeld cattle 15 

Ladders sheltered under ver- 
anda floors 332 

Laddie's lotus-eating- days 260 

Lady-bird, smug- 93 

Lady-bird turtles 59 

Lagoon and curving waterway. 159 

Lake, inland 211 

Lake - protected dwellings of 

Switzerland 299 

Lamps, non-rusting metal 160 

Land-locked lagoon 204 

Land titles 287 

Landscape gardening . . 22 

Landscape gardening on paper. 339 

Landscaped villas 133 

Landscaping, expense of 292 

Landscaping keeping pace with 

building 296 

Lantern, cathedral 237 

Lantern, King Alfred's 237 

Lanterns, Paul Revere 281 

Lanterns suspended from gar- 
goyles 281 

Lapsing to the antique '.'.'. 5 

Lares and penates 219 

Large rooms vs. small 252 

Last of thirty steps in building 161 
Last plant to leave and bloom.. 101 
Last stand against insect world 74 
Last word in building is never 

spoken 330 

Latch-key, fighting for ... 289 

Latch of Colonial days 242 

Latch-string 288 

Latch-string, far cry to puliing 

the 160 

Latest bird callers 47 

Lath, galvanized wire 161, 281 

Lathe 63 

Lathe, electric 225 

Latitude in contracts 297 

Lattice, vine embowered 239 

Laurel, lamb-kill 84 

Lavatory 169 

Lavatory stolen from cellar.... 152 

Lawns, beautifying of 77 

Lawn contours . . 21 

Lawn, lengthening of 243 

Lawn motor 21 

Lawn ornaments 244 

Lawn, preparation of 21 

Lawn seed 21 

Lawn, systematic rolling of...". 21 

Lawn vista 243 

Laze bugs 91 

Leader connections 9 

Leaf blight 55 

Leaf hopper 55, 91 

Leaf mansion of cherry twig tier 94 

Leaf-roller weevil 91 

Leaf tent miners 94 

Leaks that mar 318 

Leaks, their cause and remedy. 317 
Leaks through insidious avenues 303 

Learning plant names 91 

Leather injured by moisture.... 219 
Ledge barren of water courses. . 270 
Ledge formation interesting to 

geologist 203 

Ledge. rough edged, lichen- 
covered 133 

Ledges 140 

Ledges, stone piled on 15 

Legal forms 292 

Leghorns 31 

Leo. King of St. Bernards 27 

Lenidoptera, 50.000 species of, 91, 92 

leprous black knot 83 

"Let God do His work" 124 



"Let the dead past bury its 

dead" 252 

Letting farm on shares 58 

Lexington 247 

Libby Prison 31 

Library 189, 219 

Library alcove in bayed tower. 154 

Library on north 212 

Library side wall of leaded 

glass 193 

Lichen-covered stone outcrop- 
pings 115 

Lichen-rifted rock 100 

Lichens 21 

Lien laws of mechanics 289 

Life defenders and prolongers. 97 

Life-giving sap cut off 237 

Life in the open for ten months 239 

Life of a house 301 

Life saver or destroyer 88 

Lift, balanced 155, 194, 235 

Lifted above the turmoil of 

earth 315 

Light a good defense 237 

Light sandy soil best for early 

crops 338 

Light screened for horses 244 

Lighting, diffused 237 

Lighting fixtures 237 

Lighting house from the out- 
side 237 

Lighting, indirect 237 

Lightning rod questionable pro- 
tection 318 

Lightning rods 7 

Lightning, speed-crazed 26 

Lightning strikes Buena Vista's 

tiled tower 331 

Lights, electric 237 

Lilacs 57 

Limb breaker stair 254 

Lime efflorescence 213 

Lime, pock-marked 321 

Lime with sand 74 

Limestone disintegrates more 

or less rapidly 307 

Limitations of unlimited wealth 300 

Line of succession 299 

Linen closet with Victorian 

doors 228 

Linen drawers 227 

Linen storage in French farm- 
house 227 

Linings, felt 289 

Lintel, carved griffin 113 

Lintels, carved 154 

Lintels, peaked 226 

Lion rampant in tiled floor 110 

Lions flanking front door 160 

Little Minister 120 

Little Turk 53 

Living and gala rooms made 

more impressive 307 

Living five centuries 65 

Living is serious business 287 

Living room 217, 251, 257 

Living room screened 277 

Living room, size of 277 

Living room, south and west.. 212 

Living room, 35x45 183 

Living spring a travesty when 
house is gridironed with 
pipes connected with com- 
munity reservoir 307 

Loam re-tooping 22 

Lobster tank 282 

Location 291 

Location of kitchen 304 

Location vs. construction 212 

Lock and hinge, invisible. . .220, 228 

Lockers 230 

Locks, burglar-proof 226 

Locks, mortise 235 



IXDEX 



395 



Locust immunity 5. 

Log' burner 232 

Log cabin 257 

Log' cabin of Brobdignaglan 

proportions 221 

Log gia 241 

Loggia, red quarry tiled 218 

Log'gia, treatment of brick floor 2 2D 

Log-slabbed dwelling' 140 

Logs peeled and varnished 221 

Lonesome grandeur of large 

room 184 

Longfellow's first poem 100 

Long Island Sound's sand and 

rock-bound shore 211 

Long Island Sound yachting 

ground 211 

"Look before you leap" 287 

Lookout 222 

Lookout above dusty highway.. 121 

Lookout, farm 7 

Lookout room 234 

Loop-the-loop rack 225 

Lost in the mountains of Leba- 
non 299 

Lost vista 247 

"Lotus eating' days" 247 

Lounging room, outdoor 129 

Lowboys 5 

Low candle power bulbs 237 

Low e.'iling 5 

Low land hot and damp 53 

Lowering a ceiling- 329 

Lowing herd, ripening- harvest, 

swirl of bloom 342 

Lumber, souveniring' of 293 

Lumber, waste of 289 

Lure of the lumber pile 342 

Lure of the town 41 

Luxurious comfort on warmest 

days 204 

Luxurious vernal growth 335 

Machine, rowing- 122 

Madame best authority for room 

location 304 

Maggots 93 

Mahogany stain 281 

Maine, rock-ribbed coast of . . . . 157 

Majestic pine 65 

Makeshifts 2 

Making a lawn 21 

Malarial poison ivy 98 

"Malice aforethought" room.... 138 

Man-bird seeking 23-1 

Man cook 63 

Man of the earth 98 

Mangles 224 

Manoeuvreing' army 208 

Manorial panes 214 

Man's care-free leg-acy 160 

Man's existence hinging on 

insect life 90 

Man's head to g-round 41 

"Man's inhumanity to man".... 90 
Man's progress from primordial 

cavern 299 

Man's self-destruction 13 

Mansard. Monsieur 215 

Mantel breasts 233 

Mantel, brick 234 

Mantel, brick-hooded 154 

Mantel decoration 242 

Mantel face niche 135 

Mantel fronts 242 

Mantel, hooded 242 

Mantel, iron-bound oak 175 

Mantel mirror barred 233 

Mantel of weather beaten boards 222 

Mantel shelf, hierh 233 

Mantel shelf, low 233 

Mantel, shell decorated 251 

Mantel, stone 189 



Mantels 144. 233, 329 

Map of escape from maze 24 4 

liple, bird's-eye 22S 

Maple borer 84 

Maple, grain of 234 

Maple, green and white striped 

bark 81 

Maple sugar harvest 84 

Maple, use of 235 

Maples 57, 65 

Maples, split-thread leaf 84 

Marauder vs. Marauder 58 

Marauding freebooters 92 

Marble dust cement 214 

Marble steps 326 

Marbleized front 161 

Marmion's plume 244 

Marquise 132, 160, 244 

Martin, praying 90 

Mason's delays 290 

Mast 282 

Mastering- dry details of con- 
struction 306 

Mat, inset 317 

Match lock 221 

Material ahead of requirements 
best goad to keep job at 

concert pitch 293, 306 

Material bills 288 

Material, cheap 289 

Material, checking of 293 

Material, figuring on 292 

Material, kiln-dried 296 

Material not to be taken away. . 294 

Material supply men 291 

Material, waste of 293 

Mathematics, long' and short. . . . 294 

Matterhorn plants 95 

Mattress hammock 228 

May circus vs. planting' 99 

Mayan palace, crude 299 

Mayflower pear 51 

Mayflower's errand of peace.... 189 

Maze, Hampton Court 244 

Maze, privet 244 

Meadow lark 35 

Measurements, accurate 294 

Measurements to be taken by 

manufacturer 2 94 

Meat-eating' plant 99 

Mechanics' lien laws 289 

Mechanics vs. contractors 296 

Meddling with contracts re- 
quires infinite care and skill 309 

Mediaeval castle 142 

Medicine closet, mirrored 231 

Meg-alithic masonry of Italy, 

Greece and Egypt 300 

Melancholy days 95 

Men, handling- of 296 

Merino sheep 31 

Mesh screen, galvanized 282 

Metal beading- on stair 121 

Metal box for floor cloth 223 

Metal bridging supplemented 

With wood 315 

Metal doors air-spaced 122 

Metal ear-labeled animals 17 

Metal framework for utensils.. 222 

Metal shelves, asbestos-covered 214 
Metamorphosing with guano 

and shears 86 

Miasma-breeding' cellar 7 

Mice 15 

Microbe, aerobic 13 

Microbe, anaerobic 13 

Microbe, elusive 220 

Microbiologist, State 58,89 

Microscope 90 

Microscopic lever 92 

Microscooic view- of hive 34 

Mid-height platform on stair- 
way 225 



396 



IXDEX 



Midnight marauder foiled 237 

Midnight prowler balked 226 

Mid-stair platforms 326 

Mightiest monopolistic trust.... 53 

Milch cow aphides 93 

Mildew 2 18 

Mildew, the arch enemy of grape 249 

Milk 17, 19, 243 

Milk storage excavation 7 

Milk snake:; 100 

Milkweed, rubber-producing ... 99 
Mills, country wood working... 29G 

Milton's blue hills 247 

Minaret 213 

Mind-built houses 301 

Mineral wool 236 

Mink 33 

Minor within a major world... 92 

Milage rooms 230 

Minorcas, black 31 

Minstrel balcony, 14x20 179 

Mirror doors 230, 2S7 

Mirrors, eagle-crowned 5 

Mirrors, foot wide 218 

Mirrors for dressing require a 

good light 311 

Mirrors, location of 230 

Mirrors, triplicate 231 

Mirrors, vista 230 

Mirrors, wall dressing 216 

Mission, keyed and doweled.... 300 
Missionary work for pure air 

and healthy living 341 

Misusing a southern exposure . . 7 

Mitchell, Donald G 19 

Moat 244 

Model house in cardboard 328 

Model house skeletonized 328 

Model shows size and location 
of rooms, doors and win- 
dows 328 

Modus operandi of dishonest 

builder 289 

Moisture confined is a destroyer 326 
Moisture in stone walls only 
balked by imbedding in 
cement, tarring and under- 
draining 308 

Moisture-laden south and east 

winds 338 

Moisture loopholes 289 

Moisture vs. rheumatism 303 

Molding, convex sweep 234 

Mole runwavs 22 

Mollusk vs. boats 204 

Monastic grass paths 243 

Monetary responsibility 288 

Money-grubbing age 41 

Money in poultry 33 

Money wasted on one lawn.... 21 
Moneywort, yellow-gemmed ... 89 

Monilia .' 53 

Monkey climber 86 

Monsieur Mansard 215 

Monte Nuovo crater I"' 1 

Moody's white farm 15 

Mooring rings 207 

Moorish castle 

Moorish house with flat roof... 315 

Moorish suggestions 157 

Morning room 5. 227. 230 

Morning stroll J1 

Morphine ooppy 8S 

Mortar joints, red 153 

Mortgage decreased without 

paying a dollar 339 

Mortgage may he a fallacious 

nightma re 1 

Mosaic gold 122 

Mosnuito and malaria-breeding 

ditch 244 

Mosquitoes 94 

Moss, asexual 21 



Mossy peat 100 

Moth, regal 93 

Mothering cider 63 

Moths 92 

Motif, the cross 129 

Motor boat berth 207 

Motto on door-sill 258 

Mottoes 2,4, 332, 333, 334 

Mottoes, painted 219 

Mound, frost-proof 11 

Mount block, stone 244 

Mount Mansfield 154 

Mount Marcy, snow-crowned... 154 

Mourning cloak 94 

Moving day for the farm house 103 

Muck with sand, mixture of.... 74 

Mud cocks 2 2 3 

Muggy, moisture-laden dog days 

bad for the cabinet maker. 324 

-Mulching 79, 248 

Mullins, Priscilla 51 

Muntins, curved 144 

Muriatic acid 214 

Muscat Hamburg's 249 

Mushroom venture 62 

Music room, carpetless 218 

Myles Standish 51 

Nadir of architecture 300 

Nailing, insecure 289 

Nails and hardware under lock 

and key 297 

Nails, hand-wrought 221 

Nameless seedling apple 51 

Naples, volcano of 150 

Napoleon's emblem 34 

Napoleon willow 88 

Narcissi, border of 82 

Natives purblind to speculative 

values 33S 

Nature in equilibrium 90 

Nature's epitome of human life 

seen in tree 83 

Nature's secret unlocked 89 

Nature's -waking hour 36 

Necessary roads 338 

Nectarines 53 

Neglect of pruning knife 83 

Neoclassic of the fifteenth and 

sixteenth centuries 300 

Neolithic pennpit of early Eng- 
land 299 

Nest-stealing vagrant 37 

Never - to - be - forgotten home- 

greeter 27 

New England housewife 82 

New England poet of the hills 12 4 

New England's dark day 124 

New methods not necessarily 

more expensive 327 

New old-fashioned ribbon gar- 
dening 22 

Newel, Himalayan lathe turned 183 

Newel, lion rampant 183 

Newels 183 

Newspaper advertising plus 
skill, patience, and per- 
severance 341 

Newton, hills of 247 

Newtown Pippins 49 

Niches 238 

Nigh t hawk 45 

Nil; 111 not lis 93 

Night watchman wise precau- 
tion in a large job 297 

Nipping frost 11 

Nitrate of soda 21 

Nitrates with sand, mixture of. . 74 

Noise barrier's 324 

Noise, dust and fire risk reduc- 
tion 224 

Nor-hiting constrictor 15 

Nonillions of insects 90 



INDEX 



397 



Non-silk spinners 9 - ; 

Norman stables 244 

Norman tower L40 

North room transformed 216 

Norther (the) fruitlessly heats. 339 

Northern Spy 19 

Norsemen on battle bent L89 

N6tre Dame gargoyles L60, 281 

Novelty siding 142 

Nuisances that injure the coun- 
try home 338 

Nursery 228 

Nursery ceiling with chart of 

star-studded sky 228 

Nursery frieze 228 

Nursery stock and nurseryman. 339 

Nuthatches 43 

Oak 220 

Oak apple 93 

Oak of two and one-half cen- 
turies 208 

Oak, spurious quartered '■'■-' 

Oak, swamp 57 

Oak vs. maple 208 

Oak wainscot destroyed hy horer 251 

I la ks Of -Mature 8 2 

( obsolete pa rlor 251 

i 'can liner as seen in model, 
room points the way for the 

house builder 328 

Odd hours' search for a fortune 

in land 338 

< tffsl ts 9 

1 tgived Gothic stair 326 

Oil 212 

Oil for tools 63 

Oil stove, unhygienic :'.. -47 

Old foundation serious handi- 
cap 301 

Old Glory 245 

Old-time granny plant names.. 97 
Oldest inhabitant, affidavit of.. 51 
On the ground floor friends.... 338 
One-at-a-time door contrasting 
with wide door of hos- 
pitality 328 

One i trad system l' : > u' 

One-room bungalow 299 

One-room Saxon chimneyless 

elling 299 

One thousand per cent, property 

advance 337 

Only work that kills 96 

Ontario's rare dry climate 

favors unpainted tin roofs. 315 

Onyx mantel face and hearth.. 122 

Orange rust, spring and fall... 57 

i »rcha rd facing west 1 i 

< (rchards 1 -I <> 

» rrdering ahead 296 

< >nlers, rush, object ion to 296 

< 'riei panes 214 

< trmolu, ornamented 122 

Ornaments, home-made 242 

( Orphaned progeny it i 

t (rpingtons :;i 

< »seuary 

"Our birth at best a sleep".... 98 

' 'ut buildings 214 

Outdoor dining-room for serv- 
ants 115 

Outdoor material for indoor 

uses nonsensical 324 

Outdoor to indoor couch 228 

( unlets, electric 169 

Outline columns, pilasters and 

spandrels 329 

Outlining hearth 242 

Outsh-ot of Old England or 

woodshed of New England.. 339 

Overcast 'lays brightened 248 



Over decora tion det ract s from 
painting, statuary, etching. 

and cent my t ranied oak. ... 313 

i »verdrafts 291 

Over floor covering either half- 
inch cork or cheaper cork 

mat ting 317 

Overflow pipe 11 

(iverllow pipes large 232 

( >verhang adds valuable area 
with same foundation ex- 
pense 316 

' '\ erhang deadened 115 

Overhang deadened with min- 
eral wool or cement 308 

0\erhang- four to six feet 254 

i >verhang of eight feel 169 

Overhang, wide L29, 234 

Overhead automatic sprinkler.. 332 

Over-heat and over-odor 301 

Over-mantel decoration 222 

Over mantels 233 

Oversight over all tires 297 

Over-windowed house and frail 

nsll area 313 

Ovule 7 it 

Owner's suite 226 

Ox road 65 

Ox vs. horse 19 

Oxen, cost of 19 

Oxygen in lungs of men and 
depths of matter lengthens 

existence 326 

Oyster Bay, sand bluffs of.. 132, 135 

Ozone-bathed peak 211 

Pack-horse, treadmill worker. . 75 

Paddock l, J6 

Painstaking propagation of' 

centuries 101 

Paint, heat-proof 236 

Taint not always a wood pre- 
servative 326 

Paint that wears off under soap 
and water not worth the 

labor of putting on 326 

Paint, water-proof 214 

Paint, white water 225 

Painter's contract 292 

Painting or staining artistically 305 

Painting phantasy in white.... 240 

I 'aim ing rules 7 

Painting to lower height 171 

Palladian formality 212 

Palm, Oriental 240 

Pancake water plant 2ln 

Panel, exterior, 5x10 feet 169 

Panel in exterior house wall... 189 

! 'aneled wainscot lis 

Panels in closet doors 22s 

Pansies, Spitz dog-faced 81 

Panthenogenesis of plant life.. 99 
Pantheon, earth proudly wears 

as the best gem in her /.one 299 

Panther head brackets 183 

Pantiles 214 

Pantries 2, 19 4 

Pantry door pivoted 220 

Pantry door with glass inset... 20 

Pant ry dressers 296 

Pantry service shelf 220 

Pantry, serving 159 

Pantry shelf warmer 220 

I 'a paw 55 

Paper tests 241 

Paper that gives tone 240 

Papering 240 

Papers in polychrome effects... 240 

Paradise for farmer boy 99 

Parapet 20:; 

I 'a rasit iea.l dodder ;t;t 

Parasitical eggs 92 

I "a ris green 57 



398 



INDEX 



Parking- of narrow village lots. 335 

Parlor, conventional 5 

Parlor floor roadways banish 

the dust nuisance 330 

Parlor, funeral 251 

Parlor, once a year 251 

Parquetry borders of % stuff. . 234 

Parterres of flowers 22 

Parting strip, wooden 144 

Parting strips with adjust- 
able screws 216 

Partition moving 329 

Partition removing 295 

Partitioning a house in one day 328 
Partnership in buying the farm 341 

Passers into the beyond 94 

Passing of the insect pest .... 229 

Past and present 222 

Pastoral scene 215 

Patchwork quilt, iridescent 

fleur de lis 81 

Patent plasters 321 

Path, winding 150 

Paths and walks may blemish 

a fine conception 304 

Paths, blue graveled 213 

Patio, columned and arched.... 218 

Patio, the heart of house 232 

Patriarch of the houses 140 

Paul Revere knocker 217 

Payment, double 288 

Payment, Saturday's 290 

Payments, handling of 28b 

Peach borers «> ' 

Peach trees, short lived 06 

Peaches, pit-grown »*> 

Peacock !?* 

Pear tree, long lived »a 

Pear tree, oldest in United 

States planted in 1632 51 

Pearl oyster, arboreal 45 

Pedestals formed by indented 

platform 160 

Pelasgic wall softened with ivy 

and woodbine 314 

Pelidnot, spotted 55 

Pennpit, neolithic lj» 

Pent eaves ' 

Peppermint test !•> 

Pere la Chaise 81 

Perennial growth 79 

Pergola cross members sweep- 
ing downward with under 

curve ■ - ■ 312 

Pergola, sloping timbers for 

broader span 312 

Pergolad outdoor gym 124 

Pergolas 55, 200, 218 

Pergolas and belvedere add to 

a property 312 

much more than their cost. 312 
Pergolas lower high, box-like 

structures 312 

Pergolas, outlying 160 

Perigee tide 290 

Permanent home anchorage.... 299 

Perpetual motion machine 11 

Persimmons 55 

Pet hobby unseated 19 

Pets 73 

Philip of Mount Hope 97 

Philippines 81 

Phillips Brooks' house 130 

Philosophy of building 299 

Phlegmatic, pessimistic, skeptic 146 

Phoebe bird 41 

Phoenix risen house 13 

Photomicrographic field 90 

Photos in scale 110 

Physical development 122 

Piano on stair landing 134 



Piazza posts wrongly outlined 
and wrongly placed mar 

any house 309 

Picture molding 5 

Picture window pivoted 118 

Picture windowed bay 325 

Pictures at eye line 219 

Pictures in wood 155, 241 

Pictures of fruit and game tabu 220 

Picturesque Swiss chalet 299 

Pier, protected by galvanized 

iron mesh 274 

Pier to deep water 203 

Pig door 216 

Pig nuts 58 

Pigeons 15, 247 

Pigs 31 

Pigs, ringed 31 

Pigs, Yorkshire parallelograms 31 

Pike 218 

Pillared Colonial front 212 

Pillars of iron pipe filled with 

cement 310 

Pin traps, steel 22 

Pineapple cloth 82 

Pines, Austrian 103 

Pinetum 79 

Pinnacle 211 

Pinnacle and Shore Rocks 203 

Pinnacle, fireproof 213 

Pinnacle, mind-built for twenty- 
five years 211 

Pioneer block house aspect 221 

Pipe, asbestos-covered 236 

Pipes, exposed, avoid the neces- 
sity of breaking plaster.... 322 
Pipes, prevention of clogged... 223 

Pipes set in sulphur 71 

Pipes at right angles for plumb- 
ing are trouble makers 322 

Pippins, Newtown 49 

Piratical fish 71 

Pirating birds 45 

Pistol gallery 122 

Pitch pine knots 222 

Plains of Mamre 82 

Plaisa.nce of garden 244 

Plan of building 291 

Planning generally synonyms 

compromise 301 

Plans and specifications, treat- 
ment of 288 

Plans should be accurate 289 

Plans, substitute 295 

Plans to be lived with a long 

time 305 

Plans unchanged mean dissatis- 
faction 296 

Plant arrangement 77 

Plant basin, marble-rimmed.... 183 

Plant baskets of stone 113 

Plant boxes 144 

Plant contamination, curbing of 154 

Plant contrasts 95, 101 

Plant decorated fire rampart... 113 

Plant, double barreled 100 

Plant labels, imperishable 95 

Plant life, apogamy of 99 

Plant life shielded the stone 

roof 314 

Plant life vs. money 99 

Plant lineage 89 

Plant names, homely, every-day 96 

Plant niches 161 

Plant owners unappreciative. . . 95 

Plant potting as recreation .... 248 

Plant reserve banks 100 

Plant that blooms after losing 

leaves 81 

Plant whose life blood eases 

pain 81 

Plant window, south 113 



INDEX 



399 



Planting-, neighborly and 

unneighbourly 247 

Planting rules 78 

Planting small plants by the 

thousand 339 

Planting too closely 83 

Plants arrogantly com- 
mandeered 93 

Plants edging brooks and 

woods 96 

Plants for seashore 204 

Plants, fungi-immune 87 

Plants in hedge rows 97 

riants, insect-immune 87 

Plants, oogamous 99 

Plants, over-night surprise 97 

Plants replenished from the 

greenhouse 312 

Plants, salt air and mist- 
immune 202 

Plants, smooth stemmed and 

leaved 100 

Plants, spindling 247 

Plants, sub-arctic 95 

Plants, thallophytio 99 

Plants that squarely face salt 

water 101 

Plants unlabeled 95 

Plants, variegated 87 

Plants, wide range of 98 

Plants, yellow, list of 61 

Plaster barriers 183 

Plaster board, desirable in cold 
weather, useless for a bar- 
rel, dome or curved ceiling 321 
Plaster casts in over mantel... 270 

Plaster casts tinted 233 

Plaster ceilings and walls but 
little more expensive than 
shellacked and re-shellacked 

wood 327 

Plaster decoration 296 

Plaster, first coat, brown coat, 

finish skim coat 321 

Plaster, frozen, rubs off 321 

Plaster of paris, if sparingly 
used by a mason minus a 
conscience makes a plaster 

that rubs off 321 

Plaster protected by wainscot- 
ing 327 

Plaster, untrue surfacing pil- 
lories for all time a careless 

mason 321 

Plaster, wood pulp 282 

Plastered ceilings often dan- 
gerous shams 321 

Plastered interiors essential. . . 252 

Plasterers' grounds 328 

Plastering, air-spaced 214 

Plastering on wooden or wire 

lath, cost per yd 292 

Plastering rounded at all cor- 
ners 321 

Plate glass 297 

Plate glass essentials 146 

Plate glass wind shields 215 

Plate rack 239 

riates and sills with halved 

joinings 316 

Platform, brass railed 207 

Platform, iron grated 234 

Platform, movable 270 

Playhouse 73 

Play side of farming 73 

Playthings of orchard 47 

Pliny's wonder garden 208 

Plodding dobbin and shanks' 

mare lengthen the distance 338 

Plodding Peggoty 23,26 

Plodding ploughman 19 

Ploughing, sub-soil 21 

Ploughs ' 59 



Plum tree 53 

Plumbing 322 

Plumbing and heating pipes 
carried to third story and 

capped 330 

Plumbing, back-aired 13, 146 

Plumbing contract 292 

Plumbing fixtures ....231, 322, 323 
Plumbing fixtures covered with 

unsalted tallow 323 

Plumbing, open 282 

Plumbing: Pipes placed before 
floors are laid; pipes con- 
cealed in wooden pockets, 
closets and back halls; 
pipes close to chimneys and, 
if possible, away from out- 
side walls; pipes in the 
main run perpendicularly to 
cellar; four-inch tile sewer 
pipe for private house 

better than five inch 322 

Plumbing shut-offs 200, 232 

Plumbing spells common sense 
and is easily mastered by 

a layman 323 

Plumbing, up - take draught 
secured by having sewage 
stack near hot water pipes 323 

Plymouth Harbor 261 

Plymouth Rock 31 

Pneumonia conducing atmos- 
phere 235 

Poacher-proof wire fence 65 

Poachings 45 

Poet's corner 82 

Poison in leaf and rootlet...... 98 

Poison ivy, golden red 98 

Poison pokeweed 98 

Pokeholes 270 

Pokeholes for magazines 228 

Pokeweed, poison 98 

Poland, tufted 31 

Polecats 33 

Pollen w \\ 79 

Pollen-carrying insects 84 

Polluted waters, avoiding 282 

Polygonum's phenomenal growth 100 

Pomologist phased 51 

Pompeiian wall treatment 231 

Ponderous dreadnought 291 

Pool 218 

Pool, artificial . 245 

Poor timber, getting rid of.... 289 
Poorly set window and door 
frames increase heating ex- 
pense 324 

"Poor AVill" 41 

Poplar, anemophilous 81 

Porcelain safe under sink 232 

Porch, a semi - conservatory 

entrance 312 

Porch and porch room, add far 

more than their cost 307 

Porch and veranda comforts... 247 

Porch ceiling 240 

Porch, outer, side-settled 277 

Porch radiators 232 

Porch, roofed back 251 

Porch room 134, 240, 244, 305 

Porch room, glass enclosed.... 232 
Porch room, veranda, bay, and 
porte coch&re Inappropri- 
ately painted 312 

Porch room with beams cross- 
ing a cement ceiling 310 

Porch room with cemented and 

beamed ceiling 184 

Porch room with indoor effect.. 239 

Porch, servants' 194 

Porch, sleeping 295 

Porch sleeping room extending 

into tree top 316 



400 



INDEX 



Torches windowed, settled, 
screened, or glassed in.... 

Porta la Pinta 

Porta san Paola • 

Portable porch matched board 

horror 

Portcullis 

Porte cochere 133, 

Porte cochere, arched 

Porte cochere studio 

Possession of the wild, man's 

rightful heritage 

Possum insect 

Post clamping 

Post shell of chestnut plank. . . . 

Postern gate • • • - ■ 

Posts capped with plaster heads 

crowned with lights 

Posts wider at top than bottom 

Posv of childhood 

"Potash paints the peach" 

Potato bug 5 ' 

Potato patches 

Poultry 

Poultry profit, the way out.... 

Poultry yard fence 

Powder, gold and silver 

Powder horn 

Powered by horse or gasoline.. 
Practical plan for living a help- 
ful, healthy, country life... 

Praying mantis 

Preachers edged the bog 

Pressing, electric 

Primeval man 

Princeton Tiger 

Prisoner of St. Helena 

Privet eighty years old 

Privet globe-pointed pedestals. 
Privet in leaf until Christmas.. 

Privet posts squared and 
trimmed as true as blocks 

of granite 

Privet trimmed as an ogee cun e 
Prize brood mare 

Prizes 

Prometheus' boon to mankind. 

Pronounced motifs 

Propertv made free and clear 
without cutting into your 
capital 

Prophet's chamber 222, 

Prospective customers like 
action 

Prosy essential sewing corner.. 

Protection of door and window 
sills 

Provision for changes in con- 
tracts 

Pruning 

Pruning evergreens 

Pruning new growth 

Pruning saw 

Pueblo of the Mexican 

Puff adder 

Puling infancy 

Pump handle 

Pump with salt water pipe con- 
nection 

Punching bag 

Pupa trespassers 

Puppy chicken poachers 

Purification by fire 

Purification of the cellar 

Puritan mind 

Purling brook of poet 

Putnam. Israel 

Putnam's ride 

Put's Hill 



312 

82 



312 
217 
305 
122 

159 

342 
93 

2 Til 
144 
311 

281 
141 
87 
55 
93 
140 
33 

11 

5 

221 

213 

340 

90 

100 

230 

90 



69 
335 
244 



335 

69 

19 

74 

232 

134 



339 
315 



339 
326 



297 

297 
78 
86 
79 
53 
299 
100 
96 



282 

122 

93 

27 

57 

338 

124 

222 

124 

124 

124 



Quail, outwitting a 

Quaint conceits tiresome. 



Quaintness vs. beauty 257 

Quarrels among the men 294 

Quarry-tiled pier 207 

Queen Anne architecture 153 

Queen Anne of far away Gothic 

parentage 300 

Queen of flowers 94 

Queen of Night 92 

Queen post set on a solid sup- 
port 306 

Quince borer 57 

Quince curculio 53 

Quoin, buttress, and arch 173 

Quoins, stalwart 294 

Rabbit hutches 59 

Rabbits 15 

Racked nerves find simple life.. 261 

Radiator, boxed in 236 

Radiator drum 3 

Radiators, concealed 236 

Radiators, enameled wall 236 

Radiators fed with air through 

grilles in stair risers 236 

Radiators in Pinnacle 236 

Radiators planned for but not 

installed 321 

Radiators, porch 2 32 

Radiators, ugly 236 

Radish growth improved by salt 340 

Radium 51 

Rafter and pergola ends the 

same design 310 

Rafter curve of six inches 254 

Rafter roof, kick-up 254 

Rafters extra strong for tile 

roofing 314 

Rafters used for holding hooks 229 

Rail, mahogany 270 

Railing broken by stone post 

supports 152 

Rain water unaerated 7 

Ram, double action 11 

Ramp 2 20 

Ramp, Colonial 326 

Rana's cheery peep 99 

Range ash flue 22 3 

Range boiler gas heated 223 

Range boiler hung from ceiling 281 

Range boiler safety valve 223 

Range chimney gives flue ven- 
tilation 235 

Range, combination coal, gas 

and electric 223 

Range hood of glass 193, 223 

Range, inset 2 

Range laid stone 307 

Range thermometer 223 

Rapids 71 

Rapids, artificial 245 

Rapids, man-made 244 

Rapids, rock-strewn 140 

Rare finger pineher 277 

Raspberries 57 

Raspberry borer 57 

Rat and vermin-proof 224 

Ratification of contract, written 288 
Rat-proof at sill and plate line 

with grouting 310 

Rats 33 

Rats of the air 37 

Rats of the water 208 

Ravine 71, 239 

Razor back pigs 31 

Real instead of imitation in 

woods 321 

Realm of glamored antique.... 238 

Recesses 238 

Recreation gaps 75 

Red admiral 94 

Red Astrachans 53 



I XI) EX 



401 



Red birch sometimes difficult 
to distinguish from mahog- 
any, and far i'-ss expensive 327 

Red birch trim 281 

Red birch more durable t ban 
oak under foot, yet decays 

rapidly in the weather 306 

Red ears 33 

I tod-eyed vi reo 4 7 

Red-hot-poker plant 82 

Rod letter daws 1 

Red peppers 221 

Redstarts 45 

Red Towers 152, 249 

Reed bird 41 

Reef strewn channel 304 

Refrigerator 22:; 

Refrigerator, built-in 224 

Refrigerator 1 drainage 11 

Refrigerator drainage pipe 224 

Regal moth 93 

Registers in a clearance 236 

Registers, side wall 236 

Reincarnation 47 

Reinforced cement platform 

with twisted mesh screen.. 321 
Reinforced cement used in steps 

and loggia 309 

Relic of mediaeval times 222 

Relieving nervous strain 96 

Renaissance, French 212 

Renaissance, Italian 212 

Rendezvous for land sailors.... 230 
Replicas of Italian. French or 

I Hitch Renaissance 300 

Reredos embossed with coat of 

arms 233 

I leservoir for ram 11 

Responsibility, shouldering' .... 293 

Rest and inspiration 134 

Rest room a necessity 124 

Restcliff 252 

Restful green and restless red. 241 
Retreat from southwest winds. 239 
Revival of the Renaissance of 

France and Italy 300 

Revolutionary War 261 

Revolver, picture-screened .... 226 
Revolver placed under pillow.. 226 

Rewards of merit 74 

Rheumatism breeder 248 

Rheumatism breeding basement 331 

Rheumatism deterrent 2 in 

Rhizome separation 79 

Rhode Island Greenings 4:> 

Rhode Island Reds 31 

Rhubarb in headless and foot- 
barrels 99 

Ribbon of velvety green 239 

Rich and indep< ndent farmer. . 337 

Ridge board 248 

I Lidge fire pipe 332 

Rights of owner, architect and 

mm ractor 289 

Rights of way 65 

Ripon Abbey yew 102 

Riser height seven inches 326 

Risers of translucent glass in 

front steps and back stairs 113 
Rivalins' the two blade of grass 

mi man 2:1s 

River, brook and pool 212 

River, swirling 140 

Road widening 53 

Roads and gutters 69 

Roads curving at easy gradient 213 
Roads foundat ioneil with closely 

cut turf 213 

Roads non-gullied 69 

Roads, rutty, scratch-gravel... 6". 

Roads, stone ballasted is 

Roadway from sty to firm tab 1 * 31 
Roadway, verdure-arched ....63, 77 



Rollins 3 7 

Rock and gravel treads 22 

Rockery 22 

Rock-ribbed coast of Maine.... 157 

Rock-strewn corners 21 

Rock. volcanic - veined and 

lichen-rifted 160 

Rocky coast 215 

Rocky, weed-grown hillock .... 63 

Rodding and turnbuckling Limbs 84 

Rodent, barring of 92 

Rodents balked bj stones em- 
bedded in cement 308 

Rogers' s Rings 55 

Roi faineant 242 

Roman arch. 329 

Roman God's acres 82 

Romanesque of the eleventh and 

t welfth centuries 299 

Romeo of the insect world 93 

Roof and foundation big factors 
in cost of exterior construc- 
tion 330 

Roof and towers of tile 118 

Roof boarded with T. .V- <b stuff 314 
Roof contours, the architect's 
sacrificial altar and sacred 

fetich 318 

Roof dormer 183 

Roof drenching gives fine tire 

protection •'■'■'■- 

Roof, expense of 292 

Roof, expensive 11 3 

Roof garden 315 

Roof groined 217 

Roof house of one room 315 

Roof, if inartistically high, 
should be dragged down by 

wide overhang 330 

Roof inspection 199 

Roof lookout 132 

Roof lookout railed back of 

chimney 1 99 

Roof of roofs for space, the 

gambrel 110 

Roof skylight an inartistic pro- 
truberance concealed behind 

chimney 315 

Roof, sloping 25 4 

Roof, tile hipped shingle l 12 

Roof, tile ridge shingle 142 

Roof, tiled 245 

Roof, tiled and copper Hashed. 118 

Roof, toboggan 7 

Roof trees for commuters 104 

Roof, windowed 215 

Roof with few valleys and 

angles 330 

Roof with plain pitch cheapest 305 

Roofed verandas 251 

Roofing tile 140 

Roofs and gutters, cleaning of. 9 

Roofs, curved thatch 142 

Room-in-the air 234 

Room of arches, columns and 

mirrors 184 

Room on the roof 315 

Room of comfort '•' 

Room over kitchen deadened 
and chimney air-spaced to 

bar kitchen heat 309 

Rooms at different levels 130 

Rooms, cornei- 133 

Rooms for attendants of guests 1 - - 

Rooms, gala, fr.000 sq. ft 18~ 

Rooms in proportion 240 

Rooms, large attic 110 

Rooms, misleading 20x30 138 

Rooms planned for most con- 
venient furnishing 311 

Rooms which are life memories 304 

Rosarium 91 



402 



INDEX 



Rose bugs 55, 57, 84 

Rose gardens 211 

Rose-screened arbors 243 

Roses 243 

Ross cutter 19 

Rough and ready shelters 15 

Rough cement conceals inevit- 
able cracks 21* 

Round Meadow 35 

Round ta6Te gave added space. 159 

Roup 33 

Rovers 243 

Rowing machine : . 122 

Roxbury russets 49 

Royal uedigree of the fields.... 89 

Rubber mats 231 

Rubber plugs inset in door 

frames 235 

Rubber tipped furniture 235 

Rubble cement 254 

Ruby, gorget-throated hummer 47 

Rug slipping prevention 5 

Rug, white bear skin 240 

Rugs, rag . 5 

Rule of thumb 294 

Rules, copper fastened 287 

Run of building fever 1 

Running water noises stopped. 23(5 
Rural instinct dormant in man- 
kind 103 

Rural restfulness vanished 13 

Rustic log seat 89 

Rustic stone work 113 

Sabbath stillness 234 

Safe artificial vs. dangerous 

picturesque 243 

Safe, jewel, set between studs.. 227 
Safeguarding against building- 
errors 295 

Safety in the architect who 

really knows 300 

Safety sacrificed to picturesque 207 
Safety vault liquid explosive- 
proof 224 

Sagging gate fastening 61 

Sahara in July and August.... 239 
Sailors, salt and fresh water... 277 

Sails 282 

St. Peter's Cathedral 237 

Saint-seducing gold 41 

Salad days . 1 

Salamander inspection 297 

Salamanders, defective 214 

Salamanders, lung breathing, 

four legged 100 

Salary of manager 292 

Samplers 251 

Sand barge on flats 290 

Sand bluffs of Oyster Bay 135 

Sand dunes fertilized 74 

Sand for quenching fires 332 

Sand, late delivery of 290 

Sand lighter 291 

Sand, the best sharp and gritty, 
unsmoothed by rushing 

water 318 

Sandalwood trees 312 

Sandy soil 73 

Sanitary angle toilet 231 

Sanitary base 229,327 

Sanitary cement base 310 

Sanitary two-foot rise and fall 273 

San Jose scale 49 

Sap banquet 47 

Saphrophytic fungi plants 21 

Sapphire mail 94 

Sapsucker, red-headed 47 

Sash, wrong size of 290 

Sassafras 57 

Saturday night accounting 297 

Saturday payment used to start 

another job 290 



Saturday payments 288 

Saving a few dollars 289 

Saving, losing, or making a for- 
tune 303 

Saving nerves and floors 235 

Saving of wages 294 

Savings bank loans 1 

Sawbuck sheep hurdles 243 

Sawdust-packed doors and sides 223 

Saw fly's splitting saw 92 

Saxon bower room 2 22 

Saxon exterior wall decoration. 169 

Saxon hall 222 

Saxon-thane dais 222 

Scagliola 225 

Scales, white enamel 231 

Scalloped pie crust imitation... 213 
Scantling for kick-up curve.... 257 
"Scarce any plant is growing 

here" 97 

Scarlet lightning 97 

Scarlet tanager 39 

Schedule building time 291 

Science testing guinea pigs and 

monkeys 303 

Score cards 17 

Scrap books 63 

Scraper, dirt 59 

Scraper two centuries old 161 

Screen with patent insect escape 216 

Screening service portion 252 

Screens 228 

Screens, convex 215 

Screens, non-rusting 216 

Screens of invisible wire... 216, 224 

Scrub brush receptacle 223 

Scuttle entrance for coal 224 

Scythe, death-dealing 100 

Sea Boulders iron anchored in 

ledge 274 

Sea grasses grown in stone 

crevices 204 

Sea green glass wicket 277 

Sea, restless 211 

Seamless ledge 270 

Seasoned water dog 203 

Sea-weed-clad rocks 203 

Seat, chain-hung 219 

Seat of galvanized wire mesh. . . 239 

Seats half circled 218 

Seats of cement 214 

Seats, verdure canopied 243 

Seckle pear 47 

Seckle standard in pear king- 
dom 103 

Second story conservatory 326 

Second storv, cost of 257 

Secret room, 5x8x9 229 

Seed-grown trees 86 

Seed pop-corn 221 

Seed sorting 22 

Seedling, wild apple 49 

Seedlings for spring planting.. 248 

Seeds 35 

Seeds franked by Congressman 103 

Seeds, mummy-wrapped 82 

Seeds, new 73 

Seeking an Eldorado near by.. 339 

Seek-no-furthers 49 

Segmented ceiling of dining- 
room 329 

Selecting the site 328 

Sell before building rather than 
label vour purchase a mis- 
take 301 

Selling points more in evidence 

than essential fundamentals 327 

Selling the property 330 

Semi-bungalow 150, 252 

Semi-conservatory 130 

Semi-ravine 22 

Semi-sitting room for help 63 

Semi-tropical corner 94 



INDEX 



4U5 



Semi-wild mid-summer garden 
Jungle of flowers and vines, 

glass-imprisoned 311 

Senator Vesl 

Sensitive plant, shrinking 89 

Sentinel junipers 212 

Sepal 79 

Septic tank 13 

Sequoias over 5,000 years old.. 102 

Servants' bath 152 

Servants' dining-room 224 

Servants' ell pergola-screened.. 239 

Servants' fourth Hoor 146 

Servants' hall -24 

Servants' room 247 

Servants' room with sanitary 

base 239 

Servants' suites in ell 121 

Service gate 243 

Servitors, tongue-tied 13 

Set basin banished from sleep- 
ing rooms 323 

Set basins with side wall in- 
stead of floor connection... 323 

Settle 218 

Settle in stone ledge 132 

Settle, leather trimmed 130, 183 

Settlers' cabin 261 

Settles, side 234 

Settles, stone 124 

Settles, veranda 239 

Seven-hued driftwood blaze.... 242 
Seven levers — Hollow brick, 
terra cotta, cement, galvan- 
ized iron lath, wire glass, 

steel I-beams and tar 306 

Seventeen year locusts 94 

Seven- toned wall picture. 320 

Seventh century the nadir of the 

human mind 300 

Sewage control 13 

Sewaging in open water 13 

Sewer gas 13 

Sewer pipe back air outlet 
away from window open- 
ings, well above ridge 3 23 

Sewers of Rome 226 

Sewing room 230 

Sewing room, south 5 

Shack camp 65 

Shackdom 252 

Shaft, rail-protected 226 

Shafts 61 

Shafts of light through pin 

holes 281 

Shagbark's slivered hickory.... 80 

Shampoo fixtures 231 

Shaving jogs 231 

Shaving mirrors, triplicate 231 

Sheathing selected for third 

story floor 315 

Sheep 58 

Sheep heads 249 

Sheep Hill 63 

Sheep pasture S4 

Shellbarks 58 

Shell-lined house tomb 208 

Shell. Oriental 233 

Sheltered and sunny nook 243 

Sheltering - walls of a Windsor 

or a Hohenzollern 209 

Shelves, drop 2 

Shelves, hanging 224 

Shelves, slate 2 

Shingle decay 313 

Shingle lath 2B4 

Shingle roofs 142 

Shin el e laths over clapboards.. 140 
Sbina'e roofs, seven coursed... 142 

Shingle, toothed 314 

Shingle treatment. odd. in 

gables 313 

Shingle weatherage 214 



Shingle work in diamond panel 
and grosser outrage in color 

design in slate 313 

Shingle, i interiors out of place 324 
Shingles fasten better with cut 

nails 313 

Shingles laid with different 

weatherage 1 4 _i 

Shingles nailed to shingle laths 314 
Shingles, narrow, mean tighter 

roof 313 

Shingles, odd effects in 314 

Shingles of asbestos and cement 214 

Shingles, red cedar 214 

Shingles, rotting of 214 

Shingles, single nailing of 313 

Shingles, stain-dipped 313 

Shingles, unpainted the best... 313 

Shingles vs. thatch 313 

Shingles, white cedar 214 

Shore Rocks 200 

"Shot heard round the world".. 217 

Shot-hole fungi 53 

Shotes 17 

Shower bath 192, 231 

Shower curtain canvas 231 

Shower for golf and tennis 

devotee 331 

Shower jog in bathroom be- 
tween two closets, shower 

and needle bath 322 

Shower, outdoor 282 

Shower room 146 

Shower shield, glass 231, 323 

Shrinking one's bank account.. 301 

Shrub propagation 69 

Shrub section 82 

Shrubbery, preventing damage 

to 243 

Shrubs, early 81 

Shrubs in tree form 94 

Shut-offs labeled 232,282 

Shutter, the Colonial crescent- 
eye peep 321 

Shutters, paneled or slatted, 

folded into side pockets... 327 
Shutting off stairways from fire 332 
Shutting out breeze and view.. 247 
Side-hilling house ....274. 307. 331 

Side porch alcove for milk 224 

Side walls, belting 140 

Sidewalk widening 51 

Siding of white wood boards.. 140 

Silhouettes 251 

Silk and satin, use of 241 

Silk worm breeding 37 

Sill cocks and extra faucets 

about the grounds 322 

Sill-decaying leaves 9 

Sill-laying 290 

Silo 1. 15 

Silo weighting or non-weight- 
ing 74 

Sills set in cement 248 

Silver melodies from rustling 
tree top, copse and wood- 
land 342 

Silver spur hastens completion. 306 
Simplifying building a hundred 

fold 306 

Singing' birds and winter sun- 
shine 295 

Single block steps 216 

"Sings the blackened log a 

tune" 173 

Sink of porcelain in pantry.... 194 

Sink, planished copper 144 

Sinks, high 2 

Sinks sel six Inches higher than 

usual 223 

Sir Bruin's bog onion breath.. 98 

Sir Reynard 33 

Siren heralding circus 99 



404 



INDEX 



Siren in apple orchard 120 

Siskin 47 

Site injured by poor landscaping 3u4 

Site makes or ruins 51 

Sit fast fought for SLanding room 98 

Sitting-room for maids 194 

Sitting-room hall 225 

Situation beggars description.. 289 

bitz bath 231 

Sizing of timber 3i5 

Skating rink 11, 24 7 

Skies of Japan 101 

Skimble scamble devices 2 

Skunk cabbage, cowl-cruwned . . 81 

Skunk insect 92 

Skylight 215. 234, oil 

Skylight, kitchen 193 

Skylight over-head and under- 
foot 

Skylight, wired glass 

Sky ranging 

Sky Hock 

Slag treated with steam 

"Slated ugliness," Tennyson's 

dislike for 

Slathers of ornamentation 

Slaughter of innocents 

Sled, stone 

Sleeping porches ... 135, 197. 228. 

Sleeping rooms 

Sleeping rooms showing hospi- 
tal ward simplicity 

Sleeping rooms without plants. 
Sleepless arch is best made of 

stone, brick or cement 

sleepless varmint 

Sleepy Hollow Valley 

Slender sticks used to make 

changes in plans 

Sliding door pockets lined 

Slow burning construction 

"Small choice in rotten apples". 

Small fruits 

Smokehouse 

Smoker's paradise 

Smouldering wood vs. crum- 
bling cement 

Snake, black 

Snake eggs 

Snake, garter 

Snakedom 

Snakes \[ 

Snakes, milk 

Snakes vs. young robins 

Snap shots 73 

Snap shots of building....!!!. 110 

Snapping turtle 59, 71 

Snares, wire and horse hair.... 65 

Snout beetle 93 

Snow apples 4 9 

Snow buntings 43 

Snow line vs. rose garden....! 211 

Snow men 73 

Snow to fence top 43 

Snow tunneling 43 

Snuffed-out candle 237 

Soapstone collar 243 

Sod-roofed dugout 302 

Soffits under eaves, cement 

finish :>lfi 

Soil benefitting 21 

Soil redemption 212 

Solarium, beamed and wain- 
scoted 239 

Solomon's Temple 251 

Solving childhood's problems... 61 
"Some happy creature's palace" 89 

Song sparrow 37 

Songless bird 47 

Sound, arm of 273 

Sound - carrying cement and 

metal 308 



315 
154 
234 

132 

236 

IIS 
302 

59 
295 



317 



26 

329 

189 

303 

2S9 

55 

31 

99 

30 2 
100 
100 
100 
101 
3 4 
100 
10O 



Sound controlled through par- 
titions and floors 317 

South fronts 228 

Space utilized 2 

Sphagnum, mossy peat 100 

Spanning a century 118 

spar varnish 282 

Spare the shears, spoil the tree 86 

Sparrows 45 

Speaking tubes 13 

Spectral rider outridden 9 

Speea-crazed Ligntning 2o 

spendthrift entnusiast 73 

spider, carniverous 9 2 

Spider's web gauze of baby's 

breath 97 

Spillway 71 

spiny hair protection 92 

Spiny-haired caterpillar 91 

Spires 57 

spirit-leveled billiard table.... 331 

Spitz dog- face pansies 81 

Spitzenbergs, winter 53 

Splitting raindrops 69 

Sports 73 

Spot 3, 22, 25, 31 

Spouts 9, 37 

Spread-nets for insects 55 

Spreading the spindler 83 

Spring awakening of Flora.... 81 

Spring grazing 21 

Spring water 11 

Springs that bottomed fore- 
court pool 245 

Sprouts, suckering 83 

Spruce floors curl and sliver... 306 

Squabs 243 

Square and rectangle the house 305 
Square cupola-crowned country 

house 300 

Square house cheapest, roomi- 
est, homeliest 305 

Squared ugliness 329 

Squash court 245 

Squirrel cages 59 

Squirrel house, wire 59 

Squirt guns 53 

Stacks must be perpendicular . . 323 

Stain, mahogany 281 

Stain uninjured by dust, friction 

or blow 327 

Stained glass, copper set 277 

Stair alcove concealed 325 

Stair balcony, overhanging.... 197 
Stair, broad steamer. eating- 
well into hall area 325 

Stair building problems 325 

Stair carpet rods 227 

Stair corridor screened 225 

Stair, cut-string, used in cot- 
tage and bungalow 326 

Stair falls prevented by mid- 
stair platforms, absence of 
winders and ample head 

room 3 26 

Stair gate, metal folding 226 

Stair hall, third story 183 

Stair, hidden 220 

Stair landing, forty-foot ceiling. 144 
Stair, limb breaker and weather 

shelterer 254 

stair, makeshift 247 

Stair mathematics 326 

Stair mid-height platform 225 

Stair opening moved 295 

Stair partitions of glass 216 

Stair platform 295 

Stair protected by brass stand- 
ard and silken roue 183 

Stair protected by settle 183 

Stair rail height 3 feet 6 inches 326 

Stair rail of mahogany 134 

Stair rail, stalking lion 179 



INDEX 



405 



v -t ur pisa rs of • . inch s -' ■ i 

Stair sotfit curved to the floor.. 183 

Stair step height 326 

Stair, the unaesirable 326 

stair tn potting room 154 

Stair tower II' 1 

stair window seat 329 

Staircase, cedar-railed 257 

Staircase, circular, of marble... 312 
Staircase, close string the 

richest in appearance 326 

staircase, grilled i:» I 

Staircase hall 225 

Staircase hall often makes or 

mars a house 325 

Staircase hall, twenty-five-foot. 172 

Staircase, mediaeval 118 

Staircase tower, forty-foot 146 

Staircase. IWelV feet wide.... 142 

Stairs, avoidance "(' winders... 295 

Stairs avoiding a window 295 

enclosed back 226 

stairs Lack of chimney 138 

Stairs, iron 234 

stairs, palm protected 225 

Stairs, plant decorated 225 

Stairs, sameness avoided 1 S : J 

Stairs should not link front 

door with bathroom 326 

Stairway, closed attic 2 

Stairway, circular 129 

Stairway closets 229 

Stairway well lighted an essen- 
tial 327 

Stairways, broad 252 

Stairways, cramped 5 

Stakes, financial 287 

Staking out the house 2 11 

Stalking lion guard rail 171' 

Stamen 79 

Stamp collection 7 

Stand lamps, electric 227 

Standardizing points in houses 304 

Standing hack of builder 29 r « 

Standpipe for fire ho.se 282 

Star and aphis 90 

Star-gazing .... :: l 

star of Bethlehem '.'7 

Starlings, Sute-voiced 27 

Stars in butterfly Held 94 

Statuary 218 

Statue and vase, Italian adap- 
tation of 217 

Stealing a bathroom from a 

barn-like room 329 

Steam heating, l"w pressure 

system 323 

heal ing plant 236 

Steam pipes and charred wood. 32'! 
Steam pipes and spontaneous 

combustion 323 

Steamer stair design 121 

steel edge of woodsman and 

point of ploughman 301 

Steel-tipped furniture 22", 

Steel traps 65 

Step wooded incline 140 

Steers 19 

Step ladder, railed 1 :::: 

Step-up window tread 234 

Steps cut from a single block 

of stone 219 

Steps binned against wall 2 17 

steps of cement 132, 21 I 

Steps of rail wav ties 22 

steps, stone ledge, for bathing 

and landing 208 

Steps, tiled, 'mid rough rocks.. 207 
St. 'PS twenty feet wide 172 

Stercorary. screenine of 100 

Stereotyped construction 305 

Sterilizing 1 surroundiiurs 338 

Stewart. Robert, of (Gloucester. 221 



stick pin colony 93 

SI l-inu 7n 

Stilted life t hat strains 251 

Stingers 'i'i 

Stock and extras in buying the 

farm :: I 1 

stolen closet 277 

St 'den ha\ i rnp i' ] 

st uiie a dust collector 324 

Stone and cem< nt drying out an 

essentia] 

stone and cement work, orna- 
mental 252 

Store ballasted roads 15 

Stone binders through a wall 

Meed e\t I'M tailing II T 

Stone, brick and terra cotta 

blocks so much per foot. 292, 307 

Stone bungalow 2 74 

Stone chimney a dust collector 
and dismal failure save in 
bungalow, den, or porch 

room 319 

stone chimney breast target... 122 

Stone drain 248 

Stone house vs. dampness J74 

Sir, lie Japanese "oils ^44 

Stone mason, skilled Italian... 105 
Stone partitions out of place... 324 

Stone pier L'n7 

Stone rampart rail 203 

Stone roofs by our Hibernian 

thatcher :: 1 i 

Stop,, settles 124 

Stone so much per yard 292 

Stone underdrained ditch for 

leaders 318 

Stone walks, single, unsafe.... 243 

Stone walls 15 

Stone, weather beaten and 
cracked, suitable only for 
underdraining land and road 308 
Stone work, boulder laid up 
rustic, cement bedded 
rubble, coursed or random, 
broken ashler- random- face, 
or smooth cut quarry laid in 

range form 307 

Stonehenge 130 

Stoneless land 152 

Stonycrest. before we set shrub- 
bery-, buttressed wall, 
double chimney of selected 
stone, picture window and 

stone work Ill 

Stop valve in preference to 

tank 231 

Stoppage in pipes prevented.... 323 
Stopping fourth story floor 

beams for balcony 183 

Storage locker 220 

Storage pantry 2 

>t i >ra b e room 194 

Stored-up sunshine inn 

"Storehouse medicine of the 

mind'" 2 1!' 

St oreroom 254 

Storm King 129 

Storm warders 228 

Storin windows in side porch.. 232 

Storms that rack and rock 129 

strainer of galvanized iron.... 282 
Strand of sand ami cliff 157 

Stratford-on-Avon 82 

Straw matting for hot-beds.... 248 

Strawberries, wild 55 

Strawberry, fall fruiting lO:} 

Strikes 288 

String piece metal-beaded 121 

Stringers against chimney 214 

"Striving to better oft we mar" 12 
Stroll path 89 



406 



INDEX 



Structural beauty 242 

Struggling', warring insect life. y4 

Strutting of timbers imperative 315 

Stucco cracks 161 

Stucco on steel lathing 140 

Stucco on wooden lath 140 

Stucco over lath not so durable 

as over hollow brick 309 

Stucco on eight-inch centres and 

V-irons gives air space 309 

Stucco-s?ded house 118 

Stucco three-coat work 161 

Stud crippling midway between 

floor and ceiling braces, ties, 

and stops lire draught 317 

Studding extra size 2x6 and 3x4 316 

Studding well toe-nailed 316 

Studio beamed to ridge 197 

Studio den 241, 282 

Study in shades of white 240 

Study table 237 

Stump grubber 59 

g(y]g I 9 

Sub-arctic plants 95 

Sub-contractors 295 

Sub-rock foundation 274 

Sub-soil upheaval 59 

Succulent growth, watering of. 79 

Suet luncheon 243 

Summer kitchen yielding sum- 

mer comfort °39 

Summer rental 58 

Sun and rain mighty factors in 

climb toward independence 340 

Sun bathroom 227 

Sundews, viscous-deluged 99 

Sun dial, ancient type -08 

Sun dial from Olde England... 244 
Sun dial motto, "It is always 
morning somewhere in the 

world" 208 

Sun dial time equation -08 

Sun dial, wall, motto-circled.. 133 

Sun-exposed wires 69 

Sunflower diet • ■ • 33 

Sunken garden 217, m 

Sunlight, companionship, care 

and air 215, 295 

Sun of twenty year farming day 

sank below the horizon 104 

Sun or shade, as desired 251 

Sun reflection on red tiled ver- 
anda roof . . 314 

Sun room 2- 1 

Sun room on second story bal- 
cony 320 

Survival of fittest 55, 90 

Suspension bridge < 1 

Swallow tail 94 

Swallows 35 

Swamp lowland 245 

Swamp oak 57 

Swamp reclaimed 140 

Sweet corn, black 102 

Sweet fern thicket 99 

Sweet potatoes 102 

Swifts, bow-winged 45 

Swimming pool 200, 213, 225 

Swinging compass from north 

to south 144 

Swinging shutter of colored 

glass 215 

Swivel-elbow-knuckle-bar and 

chain-snap-fastening 24J 

Svcamore, the 57 

Sylvan dell 245 

Sylvan forest scene 19o 

Symmetrical roof as four to six- 
teen 305 

Sympathy for millionaire 96 

Systematic inspection by mason, 

carpenter and plumber 302 



Table, monastery sawbuck 5 

Tadpole, gill-breathing stage.. 100 
Tangled forest and rock-strewn 

field 301 

Tanglefoot 74, 93 

Tank, high flush 231 

Tank, planished and copper- 
lined 3 

Tanks, siphon-connected 13 

Tapestries on stair rail and 

wall 242 

Tar 212 

Tar vs. ground air and damp- 
ness 305 

Tares vs. grain 55 

Tarradiddler'.s yarn 45 

Taurus 17 

Tax on air and sunshine 215 

Tax rates 289 

Tea house 239 

Tea plant 102 

Tearing out unsatisfactory work 142 

Telescope 34, 234 

Ten or fifteen per cent, hold 

back 288 

Tender plants 89 

Ten-room house for $3,000 150 

Ten to fifteen per cent, added 

for possible changes 293 

Tenant on own domain 58 

Tennis court skating rink 22 

Tennis screen, wire 22 

Tent caterpillars 91 

Tent life, damp and dark 251 

Tent on the beach 341 

Terra cotta 142, 303 

Terrace, brick tiled 239 

Terrace held by honeysuckle... 22 

Terrace of cement 239 

Terrace terrazzo-paved 305 

Testers, canopied 5 

Testing standpipe, ladder rais- 
ing, etc 332 

Testing stone homes for cattle 

vs. wooden shelters 303 

Tests of a house 242 

Thane and yokel, ignorance of. . 230 
Thatch roof imitated in wood 

by seven shingle lappings.. 313 
Thatched buildings condemned 
and re-roofed with shingle 

or tile 313 

Thatched cocoons 91 

Thatched roofs, England's fire 

law against 313 

"The world is too much with 

us" 96 

Theban tomb 82 

Theban mantel decoration 233 

Thermostats 236 

Thieves balked 225 

Thimbles and stoppers in cellar 

and garret a convenience.. 319 
Thinning bunch and cluster.... 55 
Third floor spells difference 
between comfort and dis- 
comfort 330 

Thirty-four thousand to five 
hundred thousand dollar in- 
crease in value '■'<?>! 

Thomas Prence, Governor of 

Plymouth Colony 51 

Thousand Islands 211 

Three motifs in bungalow ex- 
terior 254 

"Three whoops, a holloa and a 

holler" 212 

Thrift-driven Yankee 2ol 

Throated mantel hood 233 

Throne of the fire king centres 

his group of devotees 311 

"Through this wide open gate" 243 
Thrush 41 



INDEX 



407 



Tie and pole forestry 59 

Tiger I tie 93 

Tiger tail 94 

Tile capping working loo.se.... 316 

Tile, fireproof 214 

Til<- flues essential in stone 
chimneys; all cr e v i c e .- 
s h o u 1 il be thoroughly 

cemented 319 

Tile, hollow brick corrugated.. 213 
Tile of windmills and luggers. 233 

Tile, quarry 169 

Tile routs 302, 314 

Tile ridged and hipped 118 

Tiled court 220 

Tiling, set in cement laid on 
earth, drags moisture to the 
surface; deep cement foun- 
dation and draining neces- 
sary . ." 308 

"Till fell the frost from clear 

cold heaven" 102 

Timber construction substantial 310 
Timber cutting and tenoning.. 316 
Timber essential safe-guards.. 316 

Timber protection 236 

Timber, shaky and soggy 289 

Timbered stucco 140 

Timbering and framing 315 

Timbering as represented by 
scantling, purlin, wall and 
roof plates, must be free 

from shakes 315 

Time, cornering elusive 297 

Time data mixed 290 

Time-forfeiture money clause.. 

288, 290 
Time rather than season for 

pruning 78 

Time, waste of 289 

Tin, painting back and front of 315 

Tiny Cote, cost of 2Si 

Title guarantee policy 2ST 

Toad, domesticated 2 

Tobacco stem burning 248 

Toboggan slides 73 

To build or not to build, the 

question 2^9 

Toddlers' garden 61 

Toggery closet 229 

Toilet and bath separated 231 

Toilet fixtures noiseless and 

non-siphoning 322.. 

Toilet safeguard shut-off in 

bathrooms 322 

Tomato worm 93 

Tool room 146, 225 

Tools, new fangied 73 

Tooth of time fanged into our 

portable houses 257 

Topiary art, examples of 67 

Top notchers 27 

Topsy, that mare of mares 

15, 23, 25 

Toredo battle in August 208 

Tornado-proof 251 

Tornado, the 72 

Tortoise 94 

"Touch of Nature makes the 

world kin" 313 

Tourelle 213 

Tower ceiling, decoration of... 241 
Tower design from College Hill 

in Burlington, Vermont.... 153 

Tower lookout 133 

Tower rooms 241, 247 

Tower, sugar-loaf .' 13 

Towering, swaying forest 215 

Town cemetery 26 

Toy closet in playroom 295 

Toy house for future genera- 
tions 328 



Tracing back waul the how and 

wny •.] 1 

Track walker, red lantern of.!! 92 
Tragedy and pathos boon com- 
panions 26 

Training upward the low- 
grow er 33 

Trammels 172, 221 277 

Tramp insect . ' ' 92 

Transom adjuster ..!!!!!! 235 

Transom bar ti uss 144 

Transom with curved top..!!" 115 

Transoms, leaded 144 

Trap door to trunk room iii 

veranda ceiling 281 

Trap rock for roads 69 

Trap rock from Orange Moun- 
tains 159 

T'-ai^e ;;;;; 122 

Treadmill 19 

Treatment of window, door, fire- 
place, etc 304 

Tree and shrub planting ! 79 

Tree and shrub pruning 79 

Tree, anemophilous 81 

Tree basket nest ! ! ! ! 138 

Tree blue as steel \\ 85 

Tree centreing veranda ......'. 138 

Tree drawing- electricitv from 

soil 213 

Tree-dripped spaces screened.. 

Tree fence post protected 69 

Tree growing through porch 

floor 228 

Tree growth exampled . . .' !!!!!! ''OS 
Tree house straddling highest 

crotch 63 

Tree hut of the African.'.'.'.'.'.'" 299 

Tree mosses 298 

Tree nursery ....... ~80 

Tree, oak of Mamre, only full 
grown Mamre oak tree in 

world 82 

Tree of Heaven 88 

Tree of Paradise 81 

Tree outlines 80 

Tree peonies ." 94 

Tree north pole pointers...'...'. 80 

Tree roses 94 

Tree sparrows !!!!!!! 43 

Tree species ' 57 

Tree tarring 74 

Tree Top in the tree tops....'.'.' 270 

Tree-top room 228 

Tree, vine and shrubbery soft- 
ening a glazed exterior.... 303 

Trees and shrubs, weeping 80 

Trees block protected 236 

Trees, feature so 

Trees killed by electricitv..!..' 236 

Trees, leafless SO 

Trees, nursery-grown 49 

Trees, scraping and tarring of . . 74 

Trees snapped asunder 71 

Trees, suet-decorated 101 

Trench leaping 23 

Trespassing pupa " ! 93 

Trilobites two million years old. 183 
Trim, baseboards eighteen inches 

^ high 324 

Trim, better mitreing in clear 

fall and winter days 324 

Trim, chemically eaten 324 

Trim, cherry 154 

Trim, Colonial dental, edsring 

beam and cornice 324 

Trim controls wall and ceiling 

decoration 296 

Trim cost halved 296 

Trim, ebonlzed antique !!! 121 

Trim for servants' quarters 
absolutely plain, dust cur- 
tailing 324 



408 INDEX 

Trim high enough for base Twentieth century man 242 

plus "space 32-1 Twenty-five or more trades re- 
Trim intarsiatura work of the quired to build a real House 300 

fifteenth century 324 Twenty stories to banish the 

Trim interior ' 168 duster 7 

Trim' iiff-saw and hand chisel Twenty years of farming 57 

work, imitating carving.... 324 Twin chimneys 221 



Trim, kiln dried. 



Twin guardians 98 

Trim' miVred~in~ new "ways 324 Twin manias of farming and 

Trim narrow and thick, wide housebuilding 249 

and thin ogee curve, or 1 \\ in spurs of guano and shears 86 

mured at' the" corners 32 4 "Two apples a day'' 47 

Trim, obsolete square set cor- Two fireplaces . 232 

n'er D i oc k •••• 324 Two tronts of a house 252 

Trim of weather-beaten wood.. 222 Two houses^ one... . . . 158 

Trim 



Placed against plaster Two mile floral ribbon 74 



containing' any moisture is 



Two mile garden strip !•"> 



in°- crime 321 Two winged insects 92 

Trint P'aiii rather than elab- Types of humanity becoming 

.Linn. i - tll _ _ , . , . _ fvi>n'/ipfl heQ«t« 



orate beading which 



frenzied beasts 331 



dust gatherer 3 32i Tyrolese 234 

Trim, quartered oak U-bar conservatory 247 

Trim, red birch . . . .. . . . . ^ ■ • «i TJ1 landing or an angular 

Trim, setting up ot standing., -9b entry 3*6 

Trim, square edge, in servants Umbrella canopy, wooden, for 

quarter's j»?* horse "44 

Trim, the kiln dried essential . 321 Umbrel j; a d | vers ' | \ | \ \ [ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ 255 

Trimmer heads and tail beams "Uncertain glory of an April 



at stair and chimney open- day „ 

in ¥ s .••.;■;■• oi^ Under and over cliff 1 

Underground woods, locust and 



506 
Trio oF stuffed geese 241 



Trolley and automobile traveled chestnut . . . ... 306 

turnpike suitable for a rear Underlying "know how" of actual 

entrance ••• <">v work 306 

Trolley possibilities in five Undeveloped humans 99 

years °->° Unending procession of insect 

Trousseau •••■ J' ij<v . .92 

Trout stream 67, ~c- Unknown force 238 

Trout, non-liver-fed b/ Unknown sleeping giants 51 

Trouvelot. Professor L 3. Untrammeled reclamation and 

Truck horse cement 210 building 301 

True democracy of country liv- Unwalled illusion rooms 230 

ing "all for each and each Unweired running streams 71 

for all" 335 Up-from-cradle farmer 58 

Trundle bed 62 Upheaval in the middle of the 

Trunk closet in second story nineteenth century 300 

saves steps and defaced 

stairs 324 Vacuum cleaning 2S2 

Trunk, false bottom 229 Vacuum cleaning outfit 23S 

Trunk, horse hair covered 221 Valleys copper-flashed 211 

Trunk of 1708 221 Values advance .... 341 

Trunk room 281 Valve, automatic 11 

Trusses, one-inch iron rods set Vanquishing the ennui of exist- 
up with turnbuckles be- ence 341 

tween planks 316 Varied soil and condition 97 

Try-out nursery 102 Varnish tree 102 

Tub plants 62 Vases 203, 218 

Tubers and seeds 100 Vassalage on 1,000 acres 58 

Tubs, laundry, used for table.. 194 Vault 224 

Tubs, six, centreing laundry... 194 Vault, burglar-proof, concealed 

Tudor arch 329 in chimney arch 197 

Tudor, Jacobean, Elizabethan or Vault, fireproof 224, 229 

Victorian 300 Vega 27 



Tulips 



Vegetable cellar 254 



Tumble weed tumbled trouble.. 98 Vegetable novelties 102 

Turf steps squared and firmed. 239 Vegetable storage 62 

Turkey gobbler, bronze 33 Veneered beauty vanishes 303 

Turkey, sixty pound 33 Ventilated sub-cellar 237 

TurkeVs 15 Ventilating fan in kitchen flue 22:: 

Turkish bath 225 Ventilating; kerosene stoves.... 248 

Turkish crescent 53 Ventilating louvre 251 

Turning over first clod of earth 211 Ventilation 5 

Turnspit 221 Ventilation at ceiling line 234 

Turnstiles 243 Ventilation by electric heater in 

Turntable 251 chimney 231 

"Turret to foundation stone"... 245 Ventilation by gas burner in 

Turrets 118 chimney 231 

Turtle longevity 59 Ventilation, hood 134 

Turtle ponds . ." 59 Ventilation through chimney 

turtle prophet 22 flue . • ■ • • 219 

Turtle, snapping "> Ventilation through door-sill.. 235 

Turtles 34 Veranda ceiling leaf roofed.... UK 



IXDEX 



409 



Veranda decay, prevention of.. 1 1 :'. 
Veranda extended beyond a 
house to catch the breeze 

152, 320 

Veranda floor of cement 2 i i 

Veranda floor white pine or flr — 
X. ( '. pine lasts hut short 

tunc 32 1 

Veranda for farm hands 63 

Veranda, galleried 134 

Veranda posts 150 

Veranda rail, half shingle 142 

Veranda rail of stone 1 1 :: 

Veranda roof high with awn- 
ings and grille 320 

Veranda roof pergolad and 

awned 320 

x eranda t wenty feel wide 144 

Veranda view 132 

Veranda water-proof tioor 

Veranda window translucent 

glass 122 

Veranda with low stone rail... 144 
Verandas, bays and projections 
outlined willi plasterers' 

-rounds 329 

Verdure-crowned lintel 325 

Verge hoards 5 

Vermin-breeder 9 

Vermin exterminators 101 

Vermin-proof store room 224 

V< rsailles, incomparable beauty 

of 299 

Versailh S, touches Of Ill 

Vestibule 1 30 

Vestibule door metal-grilled... 161 

Vestibule draught stopper 257 

Vestibule, glassed-in 160 

Vestibuled entrance, palms, 
plants, silver-throated song- 
sters 312 

Vii eroy 94 

Victor " ,: 

View from roof uplifting 199 

View panes 216 

Views, disappearing 247 

Viking craft 189 

Village carpenter and inexperi- 
enced architect 300 

Village green of Lexington.... 217 

Village wiseacre 2.7 

Vine-draped wire fences 33!i 

Vinegar-making 6" 

Vine-screened wood to be oiled 

rattier than re-painted 312 

Vineyards 140 

Violets 24° 

Vireo, red -eyed 47 

Visitors scrutinized 231 

Vistas within and without 328 

Vistas on stairs and through 

stair window 193 

Viticetum 86 

Volcanic crater ?2 

Wachusetts 55 

Waddling starlings !"■ 

Wapre savins; 294 

Wainscot Circassian walnut.... 241 

Wainscot, paneled lis 

Wainscot, unpainted 5 

Wainscot, untianeled 241 

Wainscot with paneled door.... 225 

Wainscoting of oak 171 

Wainscoting vs. plaster 295 

Wait! make the old house do, 

with must -haves 339 

Waiting 1 she iter 124 

Walkine- stick 92 

Walks of Hat stone inset |n sod 243 
Walks of Ischia, Japan and 

<'apri 243 

Wall and ceiling rough as gold 

nuggets 2 11 



Wall candle 222 

Wa U covering 2 11 

Wall decoral ion 24 1 

Wall fixtures concealed 235 

Wall fountain of Caen stone. . L89 
Wall, honeycombed, red tile 

ca ppea 239 

Wall ladder 261 

Wall, oak paneled 1 69 

Wall of boulders 335 

Wall of mortuary memory 251 

Wall. open jointed broken 
ashler, plants atop and in 

crevices 335 

Wall plastered to the floor 321 

Wall recess for bed, with closet 

at each side 227 

Wall safe set in cement and 

riveted 227 

Wall, shrub-topped and crevice 

filled 335 

Walled-in meadow 98 

Walls, burlap-covered 241 

Walls cooled by overhang 2.",4 

Walls covered with paper or 
burlap before they are t hor- 
oughly dry foundation many 

an ill 330 

Walls damp-proof 308 

Walls ditch drained and tarred. 331 

Walls. Grecian 189 

Walls, indestructible cement... 228 

Walls, murescoed 224 

Walls paneled with marbleized 

cement 189 

Walls, retaining 213 

Walls, sand-finished 234 

Walls, sand finished, unpapered 115 

Walls, wooden-pegged 214 

Waltham 247 

Wanderlust 27 

"War that tried men's souls"... 61 

Wardian case, aquatic 193 

Wardian case zinc lined 325 

Warming pan 24 2 

Warriors mute and mighty 97 

Wash tubs of seamless porcelain 224 

Washed roadways 71 

Washer, electric 224 

Washington cave 124 

Washington, folk-lore tales of.. 124 

Wasp marauders 91 

Wasps, mud and digger 93 

Waste lumber guarded from fire 294 

Waste space in house 252 

Wasting time and lumber 289 

Watch dog safe from cajolery.. 226 

Watch tower tree '. . . 41 

Water beetle 93 

Water boatmen 93 

Water cave 277 

Water damage to plates and 

films 229 

Water filtering <? 

Waterfall, foam-flecked 218 

Water fowl 71 

Water gate 203, 282 

Water inlet safeguarded from 

germs 225 

Water lawn groomed by nature 160 
Water pipe Inlet one and one- 
half inches: outlet two-inch 

pipe 322 

Water pipes 222 

Water pipes near outer walls 
wrapped in mineral wool 
check condensation as well 

as frost 322 

AVater plants 99 

Water-proof insect eggs 91 

Water-proofing 213 

Water scorpion 93 



410 



INDEX 



Water seal holding- in leash 

sewer gas 322 

Water seal must fight air 
bubbles, downward suction, 

and evaporation 322 

Water-striders 93 

Water supply 9, 26, 292 

Water table corbeled 161, 310 

Water table gutter 308 

Water table of ogee bricks.... 214 
Water thrown well away from 

foundation 214 

Water wheel in miniature 71 

Waters, polluted 2 82 

Waterways, might of 238 

Watery grave victims 99 

Wax and water clash 234 

Waxed flowers held by hand of 

death 252 

Way out for the amateur 

poultry raiser 33 

Wayside 62, 331 

"We are all traveling toward 

sunset" 208 

Weasel 33 

Weather strips, metal 216 

Weather vane 7 

Weed-deterrent kerosene 69 

Weed-filled sod 218 

Weeding out sluggards 293 

Weedless land 99 

Week-end exodus 299 

AVeek-end proposition 251 

Weeping- widow and willow.... 252 

"Wee sma' hours" 226 

Weir tank 13 

Well digger's theory 89 

Well for ram 11 

Well hole 221 

Well, rock-dug 11 

Well sweep 243 

West rooms, broiling 212 

Whale boats 277 

Whatnots 221, 251 

"Where the sun does not come 

the doctor does" 304 

"Where you tend a rose" 

"Wherein the air bit shrewdly" 77 
White and colored whitewash 
will differentiate on the 
greensward each story and 

room 327 

White daisies 15 

White daisy, throttling 74 

White enamel finish 212 

White farm 13 

White horse outgeneraled 9 

White picture 240 

White pine boards shrink less 
than spruce, chestnut or N. 

C. pine 306 

White Rock 158 

White wood imitating mahog- 
any 306 

Whitewash thatch protection 

with whitewash gun 313 

Whittier homestead 221 

Whiz view of fences from car 

window 334 

"Who loves a garden" 82 

Whortleberries 55 

Wicker furniture 227 

Wicket, sea-green glass 277 

Wide overhang and unbroken 

roof line 129, 305 

Widen a stair opening 329 

Width of step plus height equal 

to walking stride 326 

Wild apple seedling 49 

Wild aviary 243 

Wild carrot 74 

Wild forest scene 133 

Wild garden 98 



Wilderness of bramble and 

brier 140 

Will o' the wisp Dame Archi- 
tecture 299 

Willow galls 93 

Willow, glossy leaved laurel, as 

hedge 67 

Willow, golden stalks of 77 

Wind hedge of cedar 49 

Wind shields of plate glass.... 232 

Winders 254 

Windmill 9 

Window and door frames poorly 
set increase heating ex- 
pense 324 

Window and door openings 289 

W'ndow box greenery 5 

Window boxes fitted for dresses 146 

Window boxes of cement 214 

Window boxes with evergreens 122 
Window boxes with summer 

plants 122 

Window column alcoved 144 

Window fastenings 226, 235 

Window fixtures, non-rattling.. 216 
Window frame pockets large to 
allow substitution of iron 
weights for those of more 

expensive lead ... 311 

Window, French transom 146 

Window, glass hinged 228 

Window guard rails 227, 234 

Window height 215 

Window, leaded concave 16x16 .142 
Window, low, controlled by 

button 228 

Window of bulls' eyes 281 

Window on attic stair 270 

Window on stairs 113, 183, 225 

Window, oriel 132 

Window panes, manorial 214 

Window problem 214 

Window screens painted to 

match trim 216 

Window seats, cedar lined 228 

Window seats, grilled 236 

Window seats in billiard room. 234 
Window seats six inches from 

window 236 

Window sills deep for frond, 
flower, and sun couch for 
"the necessary and harm- 
less cat" 311 

Window, slit 140 

Window, squint-eye 221 

Window tax, senseless 215 

Window, telescopic 216 

Window treatment step-up 234 

Window, ventilating lift dormer 270 

Window ventilation 235 

Window, vine-embowered 282 

Window, wide eyebrow in ver- 
anda roof, giving additional 

light 311 

Window with ventilating hood. 254 

Windowed alcove, oriel 183 

Windowed stair landing 261 

Windowless hall 214 

Windows 169, 295 

Windows, afterthought 158 

Windows at alternate height... 228 

Windows, basement 194 

Window's between studs spring 

controlled 257 

Windows, box 216 

Windows, casement 227 

Windows, cellar 225 

Windows, chain-hung 115, 216 

Windows, clustered 311 

Windows, cornered 216 

Windows deeply embrasured in 

a thin walled house 311 

Windows, diamond 212 



INDEX 



411 



Windows, double 

Windows, double Leaded 

Windows, Elizabethan 

Windows, end, enlarge room.... 

Windows, eyebrow 254, 

Windows, first story 216, 

Windows for low-studded rooms 

Windows, French 

Windows, glaring- spectacle.... 

Windows glowed with opales- 
cent glass 

Windows in nursery unsafely 
low 

Windows iron barred 

Windows iron shuttered and 
barred 122, 

Windows, mullioned triplets, 
casements and transoms... 

Windows, observatory 

Windows on one side 

Windows on staircase 

Windows on stairs, arched head 

Windows, over-attic casement.. 

Windows over head high 

Windows, picture 

Windows, sash-hung- for secur- 
ity 

Windows, side sliding 

Windows, south 227, 

Windows, stained glass 

Windows, storm, lowered in rail 

Windows, telescopic 

Windows that cheer 

Windows the eyes of house.... 

Windows to ceiling height 

Windows, translucent glass.... 

Windows, triplicate, cost less to 
set and trim than three 
single windows 

Windows, twin picture, 9x12... 

Windows, two hundred 

Windows, ventilating lift dormer 
115, 216, 

Windows, vine-framed 

Windows with automatic fasten- 
ings 

Windows with large panes 

Windows with small panes 

"Wine sap 

Winter contrasts in trunk and 
limb 

Winter flowering shrubs 

Winter Xelis 

Winter planting contrasts 

Winter pruning 

Wire-cutting branch, preven- 
tion of 

Wire fence arched outward 

Wire fence centreing privet 
hedge 

Wire guard rail on pier 

Wire hose-protected trees 

Wire leaf guards 

Wire nail good friend of the 
sli ingle merchant 

Wire rope ladders 

Wire stay embedded in grow- 
ing tree 

Wire worm 

wired glass 213, 

Wireless attached to flag pole.. 

Wireless gamut, Eastport to 
Florida Keys 

Wires, electric, damp-proof.... 

"Wires, electric, underground... 
Wisfacre visitors 

Wistaria. earliest and latest 
bloomer 

Witch hazel 

Withdrawing room 

Wolf-drubbing 

Wonder tree 



189 
215 

189 
121 
305 
311 
110 
133 
154 

216 

295 

22(1 

220 

305 
144 
234 
216 
135 
157 
193 
215 

215 
129 
248 
121 
232 
216 
216 
232 
215 
216 



327 
144 
122 

254 
215 

216 

215 

215 

49 

77 
81 
53 
212 
55 

95 
65 

244 

208 

96 

9 



313 
332 



237 

93 

315 

208 

208 
236 
236 



69 

65 

329 

120 

79 



Wood meeting stone means 

calked crevices 308 

Woodbine, lire-red 98 

Wood borer 259 

W 1 carpet of velvet beauty.. 21 

Wood carving arched the porch 154 

Woodcock 65 

Wood exteriors that shrink 
tend to crack a stucco 

covering 309 

Wood, green, vs. kiln dried 289 

Wood incongruities against 

stone and brick 312 

Wood jigger, flesh-eating 82 

W r ood kyanizing 208 

Wood lot 65 

Woodpecker 43 

AVood pulp plaster 232, 322 

Woodwork in basement enam- 
eled white 197 

Woodwork, trim, and wainscot 

painted on the back 321 

Wood yields readily to artistic 

treatment 303 

Wooden board lath 62 

Wooden ceilings, if not T. & G. 
beaded, make an attrac- 
tive finish 325 

W r ooden cold air box burns 

easily 323 

Wooden houses deteriorate from 

three to ten per cent, yearly 301 
W r ooden lath has bracing 

strength 321 

Woodland paradise 65 

W T oodland parked and arbore- 

tumed 159 

"Woodman, spare that tree"... 215 

Woods • 306 

Woodworking- mill 294 

W r ool fleeces 243 

Working by the day, objections 

to 294 

Working day halved 238 

Working pit in garage floor.... 245 
Workmen handled like pendu- 
lum 290 

Workmen remaining on floor or 
roof until noon and quitting 

time 294 

Workmen, substitution of 291 

Workshop ....._. 203 

World, insectless 90 

World of color 304 

World out of balance 90 

World restful 5 

World within a world 193 

Worlds major and minor 92 

Worms 35 

Wormwood of straggling habit 87 
Window treatment, step-up.... 234 
Window, ventilating lift dormer 270 

Worthless sports 86 

W^ould-be farmer 19 

W^ren 39, 45 

Writing nook 219 

Writing room 124 

Wrought iron boilers scale.... 324 
Wyandotte, silver penciled 31 

Xylotrya, the 208 

Yacht, condemned 282 

Yacht pier 160, 230, 274 

Yacht room 230 

Yacht steps, adjustable 207 

Yacht studio 282 

Yachtsman's shelter 159 

Yankee, thrift-driven 251 

"Yarbs" 9? 

Yearlings 17 



412 INDEX 

Years of painstaking- search... 103 Your Mecca 30^ 

Year's residential tryout 301 Yucca garments in' museums '.'. '. 81 

Yellow Spanish 55 Yuccas in serried columns 81 

le olden Tyme" 173 Yule log- 172 

Yew and privet, trimming of... 218 

Yew. 1.100 years old 102 Zebra caterpillar ot 



